The fourth R.
There was a time when the three R's were taught in the schools. Reading, Riting and Rithmatic. That technology has replaced these no longer useful skills for anyone under fifty has led to the loss of critical thinking skills by the substitution of the fourth R that has appeared in spades, and that is Reductionism. In the evolution of communication methods of mankind, we went from a primitive oral society to the written, a visual society to a cognitive society. We have, from technology of today, returned to the primitive oral and visual society. A reductionist society reduces the complex to a simpler form, often oral and visual and governed by the casuistry one sees in advertising, politics and activist claims. "I'm really busy" ,they that look and listen say. ,"Give me a summary, or opinion, nothing to read in full. A talking head on a video is good." I have to confess I am guilty too and it's laziness on my part. Intellectual laziness. It's not that I don't read or write or calculate numbers but laziness has led me to read the first and last paragraph of a long article. That's caving in to reductionism and i'm not busy. Maybe I am becoming primitive as well as the under fifties.
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