banking services chronicle 2021 pdf download

 banking services chronicle 2021 pdf download

banking services chronicle 2021 pdf download published  Whether ones TV viewing choices are ridiculous or sublime the arithmetic is the same the vast quantity of television Americans watch leaves virtually no time at least during the workweek for anything else  no time to read write or cipher anything unrelated to our jobs or maybe a favorite hobby or two. And so we become a nitwit nation with most of its citizens comfortable operating within their own little worlds of work family TV familiar social activities and errands but selfdeprived of the time necessary to practice the art of thinking and acting like a citizen. One wonders what our republic might be like if its constituents suddenly saw fit to struggle by on only say three hours of TV time per day and gave the remaining hour to something more enlightening. If the unthinkable were to happen and we were to disengage from our tubes once in awhile how might we best hone and exercise the essential skills we need to cast responsible ballots How about reading some mindstretching books Those who like to sentimentalize books in general tend to gush naive nonsense and the old saying that it doesnt matter what you read as long as you read something is the purest idiocy. It couldnt possibly matter more. Americans are tremendous buyers and readers of books on weekends perhaps but the dominant varieties are genre fiction and selfhelp books. Those may be fine for what they are but how theyll strengthen the Union  or their readers basic literacies  is beyond me. So what should a citizen of the republic be reading A little bit of everything  because in a democracy one needs to know at least a little bit about pretty much everything. We need to read that which might make us more mentally agile and better informed about our world be it works of science history economics quality literature ... the choices are endless and we need to say yes to as many of them as possible as often as we possibly can. In a democracy functional literacy demands promiscuous reading including but certainly not limited to books. Apart from the fact that books can disseminate essential information which TV or the Net can arguably do more efficiently theres another aspect of reading them that makes our doing so essential to the health of the republic. Reading wellwritten books unlike watching most TV shows or cruising through a succession of websites demands sustained and nuanced thought. Its easy to spend countless hours in front of the television or on the Internet without ever having to examine an idea of any consequence for more than a few seconds if at all. When democracys working its hardest and best its a deeply involved and profoundly complicated enterprise. It requires that its practitioners focus on vexing problems see many sides and shadings of a given question and a find creative and satisfying solutions precisely the kinds of mental processes one is led through over the course of most wellcrafted demanding books. Reading worthwhile books is a form of democratic calisthenics for the mind. Simply turning off our TVs and reading the best books we can find wont necessarily strengthen the republic or heal the world. But it couldnt hurt and our continued failure to do so is causing incalculable harm. Democracy may be what we want but until we as a people acquire the habit of stretching our minds a whole lot further than we presently do ochlocracy is  most assuredly what we shall have. banking services chronicle 2019 pdf