Generally, we Over-Simplify

We live in a society where oversimplification has taken a toll. Everyone is always looking for the easy way out. There is no challenge left and our strive is being affected. We see oversimplification in all aspects of life. We live and breathe it because it is in our nature to create it. I do it, you do it. It just happens.

“In personal relationships…we learn to ‘read between the lines’” (Lazere, 247) which exemplifies another form of simplification. We tend to in life cut corners which allows for less conversations leaves room for more assumption. The example give by Lazere in context with this statement is the idea that we see a person, we ask to sit down, we have an insinuated openness for conversation. We look at the ring finger on the left hand and factor if someone’s single or married and we begin our conversation based on symbols and body language and presumptions rather than starting a conversation with a clean slate.

Hand in hand with oversimplification comes overgeneralization. It’s just another means of jumping the gun and not going in depth enough to get a strong perception of something. We don’t do the digging into the facts that could help to make us more knowledgeable. We tend to come up with a conclusion about a group of people based on what one person does and every similar person to that individual will be forever established in that generalization. “We over generalize when we draw a conclusion about all the members of a class or things or persons or cars or computers or podiatrists on the basis of a very limited sample.” (Corbett and Eberly, 124)

 “We speak of an ironic sense of life, referring to a mind-set that appreciates the ironies that pervade every kind of experience; that mind-set is essential to critical thinking, reading, and writing.” (Lazere, 248)  Irony ties into this whole spectrum of overgeneralization and oversimplification in that we have been raised and taught is in us and we follow it because we are in that “mind set”.

Overall, after reviewing the two articles Oversimplification and Citizen Critic, I have come to the justification that our society runs on the idea of just getting by and not exerting the time or care for breaking things down and learning more. We love to simplify at any cost and without this changing, we will continue to do it and it will continue to progress.