Do you ever prepare a script for calls?
© Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV
A preacher at a Baptist church when I was young a lament existed for various individuals who could no longer pick up the phone and do simple tasks such as ordering pizza. The preacher indicated that he had spoken with young people which I assume were my round my age. I think I was a preteen at the time. The preacher indicated that they could not even order pizza without having a script in front of them. He pointed to that is sort of a moral and practical crisis that we as a people were going through.
I suppose I’ve never prepared a script for ordering pizza. Moreover I am not really ordered that much pizza in my life. Whenever I’ve enjoyed pizza it is usually been at an establishment where I could go there. Either in my youth when I could go play the arcade games or later on in life when I enjoyed a nice sit down experience.
Fundamentally this is a question about modernity. You can’t really look at the great books or Aristotle and ask what do you do when you get on a phone call. Perhaps Aristotle I have something to say about rhetoric in the context of pathos, ethos, and logos. But the Aristotelian try functionalism does not really apply when ordering pizza. It may not even apply in our modern era of using zoom. However it could apply in the context of sales.
But the question about modernity seems to be pressing. I remember the philosopher and social critic Alan Bloom discussing two views of modernity. That of T.S. Eliot and that of Thucydides. Alan Bloom suggested that he liked the view of lucidity is better than T.S. Eliot. T.S. Eliot sort of seem to indicate that the best time in human history was medieval 11th century England as the height of society and everything since then has been a moral questionable improvement despite technological advancements. On the other hand through cities embrace his modernity as indicating that indeed there may be some moral corruption and there may be some problems that come along with it but one must except it if they were to be functioning Members of society. Indeed we must embrace modernity with all the technological advancements and indications to be able to create a better us.
Fundamentally I think it comes down to the question of are we thankful for the technological advancements that we have. Are we thankful for the gratitude that technology can give us. Indeed we can get sucked into a loop of social media and constantly just look at that and it’s arguable whether that really increases the meaningfulness a lot if. But perhaps the greater question should be shouldn’t we be thankful for the good things we have and use those good things to improve the things that we I don’t think help.
Perhaps the best way to deal with modernity if onesies flaws in it, is to have a sense of gratitude to keep going us forward. I think gratitude is the key.
© Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV
