Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

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American culture

Author, Susan Jacoby relates how on 9/11, she was walking home to her Upper East Side apartment. Overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

Say what you mean

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A Step A Day, Communication

I don’t know when Confucius (551-479 BC) is supposed to have said ” If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant: if what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone”!

Whenever he did, it remains applicable to this day. More often than not, we say one thing yet mean another.