Remember: in order for a perception to change one must be frustrated in one's actions or change one's purpose.
Interpretation
Changing one's perception requires either frustration in actions or a redefinition of purpose.
This quote by Neil Postman highlights the dual pathways through which change in perception can occur. It suggests that when individuals feel frustrated by their current actions, they may be prompted to reevaluate their beliefs and interpretations of the world around them, or alternatively, they may need to consciously alter their goals and intentions to foster new ways of thinking.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing change, one might reference this quote to illustrate the necessity of frustration for growth.
Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away wtih the idea of sequenece and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself.
Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is built into it a certain responsibility we have for each other, and when people are co-present in family relationships and other relationships, that responsibility is there. You can't just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can.
A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. [β¦] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?
Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.
The best answer to the extremists is to build a better world.
We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too.
We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.
One mushroom cloud would change history. My deepest fear is that this is exactly what they [Al Qaeda] intend.
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.