Neil Postman

In Neil Postman's "Defending Against the Indefensible", he suggests that our society has been culturally brainwashed. Therefore, Postman has given us seven key elements of critical thinking to help us understand the English language and avoid the manipulation of language: definition, questions, simplicity of words, metaphors, reification, style and tone, and the non-neutrality of media. Postman's first principle is that a definition is only a means of helping us achieve our goals. Definitions do not have the power to stop us from achieving our purposes. Definitions will always have a bias. It is our job to spot that bias and question who wrote the definition, why, and for what purpose. The word "organic" is seen quiet frequently to represent whole foods that are made without preservatives and or pestecides. In actual fact organic means based on the carbon molecule. The word organic can be used commercially to pass off carbon based goods as healthy, which is not necessarily the case. In Neil Postman's "Defending Against the Indefensible", he suggests that our society has been culturally brainwashed. Therefore, Postman has given us seven key elements of critical thinking to help us understand the English language and avoid the manipulation of language: definition, questions, simplicity of words, metaphors, reification, style and tone, and the non-neutrality of media. Postman's first principle is that a definition is only a means of helping us achieve our goals. Definitions do not have the power to stop us from achieving our purposes. Definitions will always have a bias. It is our job to spot that bias and question who wrote the definition, why, and for what purpose. The word "organic" is seen quiet frequently to represent whole foods that are made without preservatives and or pestecides. In actual fact organic means based on the carbon molecule. The word organic can be used commercially to pass off carbon based goods as healthy, which is not