Points from the Videos about Doing What We Know
- Working together, or collaborating with others, can lead to more creative and productive solutions to problems.
- New experiences in new environments may lead to more creative and innovative thinking.
- This type of an orientation, or scientific world view, suggests that revisions to language habits may be appropriate:
- differentiate facts from inferences, assumptions, beliefs
- avoid simple "either/or," "black/white" perspectives; acknowledge the gray areas
- recognize the "to-me-ness" factor in your descriptions and judgments
- avoid "to be" verbs and absolutistic, all-knowing terms
- recognize when you objectify, or reify, abstract processes when you talk about them as if they were 'real' nouns
- take responsibility for the individual meanings you generate to what you see, read, experience, etc.
- look for differences among similarities, and similarities among differences
- Become vigilant in skeptically evaluating all the varieties of attempted manipulation and persuasion by politicians, puble relations, advertising, commentators, etc.
- The objective of PR and advertisers is for you to react to their messages emotionally and uncritically. Their appeals are to your "old reptilian brain" rather than your reasonable, intelligent cortex.
- "The secret of all persuasion is to induce the person to persuade himself."
- Blood type knows no race. Racial, religious, ethnic, or other prejudices based on singular, superficial differences cannot mask common human characteristics.
Read "Semantic pollution fouling the airwaves" as an example of modern propaganda: One of the overlooked and under-reported aspects related to drilling in the Barnett Shale is the negative impact to our local linguistic environment. We're not talking particulate matter here. I'm talking about the worrisome increase in measurable propagandulate in the lower levels of what is technically referred to as the "purchased mediasphere." This semantic pollution poses immediate and long-term threats to the sustainability of what Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness." I'm talking about Chesapeake Energy's full-frontal, body-slamming, leg-whipping, arm-twisting, head-butting propaganda blitz on behalf of the Barnett Shale. [more]
