Title A short history of stupid : the decline of reason and why public debate makes us want to scream / Bernard Keane & Helen Razer

Published [Place of publication not identified] : Allen & Unwin, 2015 Sydney Allen & Unwin, 2015 ©2014

Copies

Location	Call no.	Vol.	Availability
W'PONDS READNK	ReadNK KEA		AVAILABLE

Description 330 pages ; 24 cm Contents Introduction - we don't know what we are doing -- 1. I'm worth it: L'Oreal and the fade-resistant rise of liberal individualism -- 2. Suffer the little children: enlightenment and denialism -- 3. Look who's talking : why uttering our identity makes us stupid babies --4. Nudge them all - God will know his own: soft hard and extreme paternalism -- 5. The inflexible safe space -- 6. National stupidity: how the war on terror is killing and impoverishing us -- entr'acte - from Dallas with Love to Moonfaker: the lost films of Stanley Kubrick -- 7. Reason and unreason: how we've all gone stupid-mad in an age of absolute sanity -- 8. Political arithmetic or slack hacks lack facts when flacks stacks the stats -- 9. Postmodern nausea: Derrida vomit and the rise of relativity -- 10. Hyperreality authenticity and the fucking up of public debate -- 11. Conspicuous compassion: on consuming Kony Summary What is Stupid? The rejection of the discomfort of intellectual rigor in favor of the mentally comfortable and convenient. Stupid takes many forms, and they change over time, but always reflect an inability or unwillingness to grasp basic reasoning and use of evidence, willful ignorance, conspiracy theories, denialism, lack of perspective, mistaking actions for consequences, substitution of emotion for reason, rejection of evidence that fails to validate pre-existing frameworks. Sound familiar? Bibliography Includes bibliographical references Subject Popular culture -- Australia. Popular culture -- United States. Social pressure. Common sense. Mass media -- Political aspects. Mass media -- Moral and ethical aspects. Popular culture. Public opinion. Stupidity. SUBJECT United States -- Politics and government. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140410 Australia -- Politics and government. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85009597 Australia http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79021326 -- Intellectual life. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99005642 United States -- Intellectual life. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140363 Genre/Form Reading nook. Author Razer, Helen, author ISBN 9781760110543 (paperback) 176011054X (paperback)

  Permalink