What, pray tell, are “vibes?” People talk about them. They fill the zeitgeist. Vibes dictate how we feel about everything. And yet we have precious little understanding of the highly emotional sentiments that influence our purchases, name our next government, and shape our state of mind today and tomorrow.
My latest piece for the Minnesota Reformer is out today, entitled “Stop vibing and start thinking.”
An excerpt:
… it’s not much of a surprise that our society has collapsed into dueling realities based on people’s information-gathering techniques. We’re not debating the effectiveness of the “cans and bottles only” sign on the recycle bin — we’re debating whether or not nasty old sandwiches are, in fact, recyclable.
Such a world submits not to values or knowledge, but to what Aristotle (a Greek philosopher and popular cat name) called “pathos,” or emotional persuasion. And, at the risk of irritating our dwindling class of intellectuals, I would roughly equate the word “pathos” to “vibes.”
Read the whole thing at the Minnesota Reformer, a not-for-profit publication dedicated to investigative reporting, political news and issues-based original commentary.
Speak Your Mind