Our society runs on caffeine and adrenaline and speed and immediate action– to the point where those who are more intentional and deliberate (or try to be) are often ridiculed. And having machines and algorithms and devices process information (especially language) for us has only exacerbated the problem of making us all busy bodies who do things, a lot of things, quickly… but not necessarily very well or with a long-term human-oriented view. Most people in our society don’t think critically about what they do anymore. I believe this problem has to do with the fact that intentional reading and processing of language doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should anymore. And I believe that reading everything slower can improve your critical thinking skills. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to have critical thinking skills if you aren’t intentionally processing language when you come across it.

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