Summary:
The trend of getting sloppy is unable to prevent. Norton Cousins claims that the slopping virus is gradually nibbling up our conceptions of being neat. This is just like the butterfly effect, influencing the people all over the world.
The first issue is about the way we dress. Blue jeans are the most common clothing either at now or at several decades ago. A casual and relaxed look of clothing is also a symbol of dressing nowadays. Cousins explains that the way people dress make them feel they “stamp out the cookie cutters.” Another issue is the sloppy and violent speech. Today people speak a noun or a phrase which is considered as a “chopped-up phrase” to express the whole meaning of a sentence. Cousins further explains that the reason why people speak with violence and brutality is the casual attitude of speaking. The final issue is about the relationship between humans. Because of the casual attitude of sex films, our thinking gradually becomes open from conservative. It also means that people will be unable to feel anything.
Cousins’s purpose is not to make people experience Victorian attitude; conversely, he says that our “calculated sloppiness” will disappear and suggests that people in their career can find new eyesight which people will be fund of and learn from it.
Response:
With rapid development of technology, the world we live is gradually becoming more and more convenient. “Technology is connecting to people” claimed by Nokia is a well-known slogan, announcing that technology is leading everyone to a whole new world. However, due to the trend of becoming convenient, we may gradually become lazy for relying on those high-tech products. This effect may transfer to other aspects such as the way we speak or the way we do things. In the future, this condition continues.
Almost every language has this kind of problem: the laziness of speaking. In traditional education, we are well taught to speak the whole sentences while answering a question. But we sometimes just answer a noun or a phrase instead of a sentence. Maybe it is like translation. In the translation class, we have learned that a good translation work should convey the meaning which is faithful to the author. As the translating skill promotes, we can use as less words as possible to convey the meaning. Maybe the oral skill is also influenced. It seems that using several words to express a meaning may be considered as laziness or even degeneration. If we can change the way of thinking, maybe it is another evolution because we can use words with precise meanings to express what we are thinking!
If a thing is good, it may not be so good as it looks like. Just like technology, maybe it can bring us convenience, but it also brings the earth pollution. If we can emphasize on the positive points of a thing and try to solve the problems the negative points produce, there will still be many things for us to learn.
At the beginning, you point out the reason why people become lazy when they deliver some words they want to say. Because technology makes a great process in the recent ages and there are more and more high technological products invented, people are allowed to just touch the screens to gain the information they want or type separate words when they chat with people. I think the reason why they type single words is that their purposes are just to communicate. They do not have to type something formal because they do not write a textbook or an article.
回覆刪除Then, the sentence that I impress most is “If we can change the way of thinking, maybe it is another evolution because we can use words with precise meanings to express what we are thinking!” It is a new thought to me and I strongly agree the idea. In my mind, there is not wrong about simple words in some situations. If we can say few words to express what we want, I think that it is also a difficult thing sometimes. It is widely known that language human beings use will become simpler but not more complex. I deeply believe that simpleness and brevity are also an expression of beauty.