My wife and I got back this week from Italy and Germany. It was pretty fantastic all the way around! Other than one travel day from H-E-double-hockey-sticks, we laughed a lot, shared some absolutely amazing foods, experienced so many new things, made new friends, and deepened old friendships. In short, I certainly feel so fortunate to have had this opportunity.
So . . . I think that most of you would agree that one challenging aspect of this specific time and place that we are living through, this moment of history if you will, is that in some very fundamental ways, we are divided as a nation. Right? As the writer Jonathan Haidt asserts in his essay "WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID" from The Atlantic, "Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past."
This piece really digs into American ideas, history, technology, politics, and culture in the last ten years in particular and offers some very detailed and compelling reasons why social media and the way it has evolved has had a corrosive effect upon the unity of our country. I think you should read this long piece because in some ways, it's a history of your entire life. It might give you some perspective of the current moment, and at the end, the author offers some ways in which we could possibly begin to address these challenges.
So, I warn you now: it's a long piece. It will take you 45 to 60 minutes to read the whole essay, or you can listen to it as well. Since it's a longer one, we are going to count it as two of the eight blogs, so it's 25% of your entire summer reading assignment. One of the skills that I believe we all need to cultivate is the ability to hang with a complex and detailed line of argument. It's not always easy to do, but I truly hope that you enjoy this piece!
In terms of the writing part of it, I'm asking you to do two things:
- Make a 100 to 150-word comment on any aspect of this long form essay. You can agree or disagree with an idea or the whole premise of the essay, offer a critique, question a specific example the author uses, cite a passage that interests or provokes or confuses or alarms you, discuss a theme, highlight an effective writing technique, or just explain, in general, how these ideas landed with you. I'd just like to see evidence that you're engaging and thinking about the piece. If you cite a passage, don't count those words as part of your word count, please.
- Make a short 50 to 100-word reply to someone else's comment. Let's just have a conversation on the page. The title of the essay is hyperlinked above.