Every day, I see evidence that those in our society who make their living by the written word are increasingly influencing the remaining few who bother to read at all with illiterate pronouncements, accelerating the slide into nonsense. Case in point (just one of many over the last few days alone):
“Clearly, the tablet and mobile worlds have begun to impact the desktop OS in a major way. This begs the question: Can the desktop survive?”
Methinks the writer has no idea what a petitio principii fallacy is.
Beg the question=”take for granted without basis or justification”
I just hate it when “mass man” semi-literacy (or should I say “cultural illiteracy”?–w/a tip o’ the tam to E.D. Hirsch, Jr.) debases writing this way. But that’s what happens when supposedly literate people have been trained–certainly not educated–via less than literate organs such as pubschools, contemporary “higher ed” and the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind. Ah, well, I suppose it’s just one more evidence of society’s slide into a Dark Age, when more and more people don’t even know much about what they don’t know… or care. And it is, of course, this increasingly self-enstupiated, self-deluded, autolobotomized group that seems to be guiding the course of our society. But then of course,
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”
See a discussion of Ortega’s “mass man” here. A slightly different summation can be found here, including this:
The description Ortega gives is not particularly enjoyable. The mass man lives without any discipline, and—as Ortega remembers from Goethe—“to live as one pleases is plebian.” The mass man “possesses no quality of excellence.” He demands more and more, as if it were his natural right, without realizing that what he wants was the privilege of a tiny group only a century ago. He does not understand that technological wonders are the product of an intricate cultural process for which he should be grateful. “What before would have been considered one of fortune’s gifts, inspiring humble gratitude toward destiny, was converted into a right, not to be grateful for, but to be insisted on,” The Revolt of the Masses claims…
…Mass man, fortified by an array of rights, is in charge of historical destiny.
The danger of that fact, however, lies in mass man’s lack of even a rudimentary understanding of culture…
Oh, you want one more? If you insist… *sigh* Idiots who do not known the very useful differences between “jealous” and “envious” as in this recent email subject line (reproduced from the blogpost of a subliterate doofus “tech writer”):
15 Android widgets that will make iPhone users jealous
*sigh* Just search on “envious vs. jealous” or “difference between envy and jealousy”. Thanks to decades of non-education via pubschools (A/K/A/ “prisons for kids”) and idiots populating the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind–complete with Hollyweird, et al–more and more people are ignorantly, stupidly, illiterately misusing “jealous/jealousy” and eradicating a very useful set of distinctions.
But of course the Hivemind and its ilk want people to be stupid, ill-informed, DISinformed and easily manipulated.
Corrected a few typos–“ms” for “ns” and suchlike. I’m sure readers can find more, though. 🙂