Lloyd Christmas ( Jim Carrey) of Dumb and Dumber fame could clearly be a target in Susan Jacoby’s “The Age of American Unreason.”
Ms. Jacoby, without apology, bemoans the state of American culture, specifically the lack of knowledge and a bias against intellectualism that pervades our society. According to a passage in the International Herald Tribune, she decided to write the book after overhearing two slackers in a Manhattan bar confuse Pearl Harbor with the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Her book is primed to set off debate and criticism, but it contains a theme that hits one of our cultural maladies with ICBM-like accuracy.
Her newly published book covers society in general, but many of our workplaces could be her sole target.
Just consider these questions:
- How many times have you heard the statement, “We need to bring this down to their level?”
- How many of your co-workers read more than 3 business related books per year (who are not students)?
- How often do you hear co-workers yelling “eureka!” when selected to attend a 5-day training program?
- How many consultants have been labeled as “too academic,” and passed over in favor of pop psychologists ( “Five and Dime” consultants) adept at entertaining and “talking the talk,” but who tout non-evidence based theories – or describe human behavior in terms that are so fuzzy that they could not repeat their comments if so asked?
- How many employee communications get rewritten to a 5th grade reading level because they contain too many multi-syllabic words?
What do you think?
