Balderdash: What It Is, Why We Tolerate It, and How We Can Reduce It | Sister Anna Wray, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2023

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This lecture was given on September 28th, 2023, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the speaker: Sr. Anna Wray is a native of Connecticut and a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia. Sister received her PhD in philosophy from The Catholic University of America, having written her dissertation on Aristotle’s account of the activity of contemplation. Sister is on faculty in CUA's School of Philosophy.

Transcript

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0:54.0	That's Thomisticinstitute.org forward slash light of truth to illuminate minds this Christmas. That's Thomisticinstitute.org forward slash light of truth.
1:00.3	The title of the talk is Balderdash, what it is, why we tolerate it, and how we can reduce it.
1:08.3	I fell in love with the notion of Balderdash several years ago when I came across an essay by
1:13.9	Neil Postman entitled The Educationalist as Painkiller. Postman's argument runs something like this.
1:22.7	If our goal is to increase intelligence, our primary means ought to be to try to reduce our stupidity.
1:31.3	Reducing stupidity ultimately requires reducing all of stupidity's expressions, stupid thinking,
1:39.3	stupid behaving, and stupid speaking.
1:43.3	Each of these expressions probably is both a cause of and caused by the other two.
1:49.5	For example, I might pour coffee into my Cheerios because I was stupidly thinking it would save me time.
1:56.4	Or I might ask you if you have a bookface account because I interact stupidly with technology.
2:03.1	Or I might have trouble understanding where you're from in Illinois because I only ever talk about two cities.
2:11.1	Chicago and non-Chicago.
2:15.9	We could probably reduce our overall stupidity by reducing any one of these three expressions.
2:21.6	But the one that seems like it's most under our control, and therefore the most promising to begin with, is our stupid speech.
	...

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