Remember: in order for a perception to change one must be frustrated in one's actions or change one's purpose.
Interpretation
Changing one's perception requires either frustration in actions or a redefinition of purpose.
This quote by Neil Postman highlights the dual pathways through which change in perception can occur. It suggests that when individuals feel frustrated by their current actions, they may be prompted to reevaluate their beliefs and interpretations of the world around them, or alternatively, they may need to consciously alter their goals and intentions to foster new ways of thinking.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing change, one might reference this quote to illustrate the necessity of frustration for growth.
Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away wtih the idea of sequenece and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself.
Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is built into it a certain responsibility we have for each other, and when people are co-present in family relationships and other relationships, that responsibility is there. You can't just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can.
A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. [β¦] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?
If we can sacrifice something comfortable, that we're 'too good at,' that might even be holding us back, we'll have more room to grow into the person we want to be.
The map of the world is always changing; sometimes it happens overnight. All it takes is the blink of an eye, the squeeze of a trigger, a sudden gust of wind. Wake up and your life is perched on a precipice; fall asleep, it swallows you whole.
I've been involved in social activism my entire life, and I would argue that many people involved in social activist movements have done very little work on themselves.
Psychology cannot tell people how they ought to live their lives. It can however, provide them with the means for effecting personal and social change.
I'm trying to tell you that there's a new wave on the continent. A new wave of openness and democratization in which, since 2000, more than two-thirds of African countries have had multi-party democratic elections. Not all of them have been perfect, or will be, but the trend is very clear.
I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.