(Over) Simply Stated

In my last post, I wrote about society's trend towards hyperbole and extremism; but there's a third aspect to our conversations which is just as dangerous; over-simplification.

I wrote about this several years ago (linked below): our trend towards shorter and shorter "sound bites" or phrases, due to the limitations brought upon us by texting (160 characters per text), tweeting (originally 140 characters per tweet), and Facebook. We don't have conversations any more. We don't have discussions any more. We don't have debates any more. Instead, we seem to have these little competitions around who can get the biggest rise out of the smallest combination of words. We try to out-clever each other, or out-rhyme each other, or whatever other comparison points we wish to judge each other one, in an effort to either reduce our self-inferiority complex, or inflate our self-superiority complex. 

Here is a perfect example:

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

That's an over-simplified statement.
The correct statement is:  

People with guns kill people.

That might still be over-simplified for some people's tastes, so I'll expand:

People with guns kill people more quickly and more efficiently than almost any other method.

That is a statement that can drive some meaningful conversation, some debate, even if there is some disagreement, and maybe we as a society can work towards some kind of resolution. 

Or this example:

"This isn't a gun issue, it's a mental health issue."

That's an over-simplified statement.
The correct statement is:

"This is issue of both guns and mental health, combined, in this particular case and in several other cases as well."

And I find this over-simplification issue to be the case in most of the major topics of conflict in our society: race, economic status (welfare, taxation), human rights (LBGTQ issues, healthcare, immigration, womens' rights), etc. Our debates have devolved into a series of short, over-simplified, hyperbolic, extremist statements; and because of that, we as a society have been stuck in the same place for, in my opinion, quite some time.

Is this who we are? Are we really at a point where we just say the same little fragmented phrases over and over again, entrenched in our little self-defined worlds?

I'm going to keep this post pretty simple and end it right here...

Prior post: http://jemacedo9.blogspot.com/2011/03/conversations.html