In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.
Lawrence LessigRead
And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.
Interpretation
Writing fosters integrity and improves critical thinking in society.
Lawrence Lessig highlights the significance of writing as a practice that cultivates integrity in individuals and a collective consciousness within a culture. He suggests that a community engaged in consistent writing, such as bloggers, develops a deeper understanding of political and public matters, as they are compelled to articulate their reasoning and logic in writing, thereby enhancing their analytical skills and promoting informed discourse.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of writing, this quote can highlight how blogging influences public opinion.
In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.
Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.
Believing we know what makes prosperity work, ignoring the nature of the actual prosperity all around, we change the rules within which the Internet revolution lives. These changes will end the revolution.
So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically.
The war against illegal file-sharing is like the church's age-old war against masturbation. It's a war you just can't win.
Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device.
IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us.
Growing up, books were my lifeline, and I owe a debt to those writers that can never be repaid. They saved my sanity and gave me a world I could escape to. If I can pay that forward to another person, that's all I ask.
Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him; if he is a walking university.
As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.
Sadly, children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only.
I did all of my learning on 'My Fair Lady.'
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