RESIST THE ACT OF TWITTERFRICATION: BE AN INDEPENDENT THINKER, READER AND WRITER! Twitterfried: (my own made-up word and definition): when someone gets so used to reading and writing tweets and/or short texts and Facebook posts that their brain gets fried from reading or writing anything longer or even the thought of reading or writing anything longer. Dont let it happen to you. In this way, our social media (society) trains us to limit our thinking, our attention span, the very means to explain our thoughts (with the use of many different kinds of words) and our ability to read and process our reading. Great thoughts need a lot of space to expand and develop. They cant always be encapsulated in a sentence or two. They, oftentimes, need to be read through, thought through, written through and worked through. On the other hand, carefully crafted slogans or catch-phrases used to influence a mass number of people can often be sent out in the scope of a single tweet. Depending on how independent of a thinker you are, these tidbits of propaganda will influence you without even realizing it. In George Orwells 1984, the slogan rang out: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Its absurd to think anyone would take to heart these very short, contradictory statements. But, they were transmitted to a society of people trained NOT to think for themselves. They were transmitted to people who were systematically limited in their scope of thinking and the act of expressing their thoughts in words. Overtime, they were less and less able to discern and fight against their societys propaganda. They didnt have the words, and, therefore, the thoughts to counter what was being pushed forth by a controlling government. Heres a very telling passage from the book 1984 (Please dont get twitterfried, just carefully read it all the way through to the end): “Dont you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, theres no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. Its merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there wont be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occcurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?” ― George Orwell, 1984 This is scary and its already in the process of happening. Our attention spans are getting shorter every year. Our ability to think, read and write is diminishing more and more every year. The value we place in these things is diminishing more and more every year. Were headed towards the wordless society of Farenheit 451, where the onslaught of media images and video 24/7 becomes a continuous propaganda machine that leaves no room for independent thought and will eventually render us incapable of it
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 12:09:09 +0000
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