July 7, 2012

Technology, Entertainment, Design

Green Army: Communications


[Reason] helps us to create a better world.

Paul Bloom (1963), Why Do We Create Stereotypes?, NPR, 14 November 2014.


What none of us can achieve alone, all of us can achieve together.

Jonathan Sacks (1948), Does Our Future Depend On More Dialogue?, NPR, 17 October 2017.




Frans De Waal (1948)


Professor of Primate Behaviour, Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta

[Humanity is] much more cooperative and empathic than given credit for. …
[There are two] pillars of morality. …
  • One is reciprocity [coupled with] a sense of justice [and] fairness.
  • And the other [is] empathy and compassion.
[Human] morality is more than this [but these are] absolutely essential.

(Moral behavior in animals, 26 October 2011)

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Michael Sandel (1953)


In 2009, Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher of children’s books, distributed free curricular materials about the energy industry to sixty-six thousand fourth-grade teachers.
The curriculum, called the “United States of Energy,” was funded by the American Coal Foundation.
The industry-sponsored lesson plan highlighted the benefits of coal but made no mention of:
  • mining accidents,
  • toxic waste,
  • greenhouse gases, or
  • other environmental effects.
(p 198)

In 1983, US companies spent $100 million advertising to children.
In 2005, they spent $16.8 billion.
(p 199)

Advertising encourages people to want things and to satisfy their desires.
Education encourages people to reflect critically on their desires, to restrain or to elevate them.
The purpose of advertising is to recruit consumers; the purpose of public schools is to cultivate citizens.

It isn’t easy to teach students to be citizens, capable of thinking critically about the world around them, when so much of childhood consists of basic training for a consumer society.
(p 200)

(What Money Can't Buy, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012)

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Contents


Pillars of Morality

Political and Economic Democracy

The Spirit Level



Technology, Entertainment and Design