As the titles suggests, I've almost entirely starred two adjacent pages that have spoken to me in Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death; more specifically, pages 50 to 51. They really gave me insight into what happens when people come to read content such as the type in this book (and maybe any kind of book if one thinks about it).
I realized that there are authors who exist that can write whatever argument, issue, or moral they can and sound like they're the most competent and knowing person in that field. They can be the most eloquent, self-proclaimed expert, and people will suck up what they have to say. Be that as it may, they won't always know the best, and like Postman says, some "lie, they become confused, they overgeneralize, they abuse logic and, sometimes, common sense" (50). That is why, as readers, we should be prepared or "armed, in a serious state of intellectual readiness" to the things we will read in the future and are reading now (50). I have frequently seen many people who are quick to side with a laced-up argument, somehow proving the television-based culture Postman describes today (and ironically 30 years ago) contrastingly to the past print-based culture absorbed in the analytical thinking that was necessary and innate to that culture.
I realized how easy it is for people to get meanings wrong with how quick we are to judge them. What if we were more equipped with the predispositions of one in a print-based culture? Would we not be more slow to consider deeper meanings than we've been inclined to? Wouldn't it be nice to come to an argument fully prepared so as to come to our own conclusions, not lost in their meanings to be more bent towards another's clever-worded sentences?
Lara May Bacani
The idea that people will use vocabulary and other notions to make themselves sound "competent and knowing" would support Postman's argument on how show business is taking over our minds. When people (whether they be on television or in real life) represent themselves with a positive impression, our minds tend to see them with more credibility and trustworthiness. The solution to this is to how you said, which is to be be prepared and educated to succeed in an argument on anything. However, technology and entertainment is stopping us from achieving that education, for we would rather laugh and be ignorant instead of educated and informed. Many arguments today are due to and also cause more arguments since no one knows everything. But it would improve society for people to be competent and be able to argue fairly.
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