In class this week we discussed
Neal Gabler’s article “The Elusive Big Idea.” A quote that really summed up the
main idea of the article said that today’s world is a place where “big,
thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little
intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are
disseminating them...” This statement made a weird connection for me. It made
me think of those academic dishonesty scenarios that we get at the beginning of
every school year.
An example: Kid #1 doesn’t do their
homework, and 5 minutes before class you see them with two copies of it—one blank,
one with Kid #2’s name on it. They copy the answers lightning fast and get an A
for the day.
This doesn’t exactly match any of
the scenarios, but it’s still the same idea. It’s possible that Kid #1 just
didn’t have time to do his homework, but it’s also possible that he was lazy
and didn’t care. The fact that he is copying the answers shows that he probably
doesn’t care what questions he is copying the answers to—he very likely hasn’t
even read them. What he cares about is that he gets the homework points. Points
have value.
People today are much too concerned
about immediate knowledge instead of forming their own ideas through rational
thought techniques. I think that resisting this common urge to simply know everything is extremely important. Pursuing original ideas should have just as much--if not more--influence on everyone's thought process.
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