Communication experts argue that there are three “beliefs about human nature.” The three beliefs are rationality, perfectibility and mutability premise. Rational premises is best defined that “people are capable of discovering truth through logical analysis.’ Perfectibility is based on the idea that humans are born into sin but they have the capabilities of achieving righteousness through “effort and control.” The last of the beliefs is mutability which declares humans are defined by the environment and that if you improve the environment you can change humans.
Personally, I can’t believe that all humans have theses three characteristics. Maybe humans have one or two premises but to make a definitive statement that “humans are perfectible” isn’t talking about one premise. From my chair, I’ve seen news broadcasts, and read newspaper articles’ that has made me believe if people were perfectible then we wouldn’t need jails or a justice system. Because we could send all the non-conforming people to schools to learn how to logically analyze. Then we could send Ted Bundy to Church because that institution can help his perfectibility premise. And lastly we can send everyone that lives in south central Los Angeles to a home where they can receive mental help.
What’s most interesting to me is the underlining belief that “an education follows from” the assumption of these premises. Well, if that’s the case, then in California, we’ve really messed up. Not only do we not have money for schools but are finding ways to cut after school programs and send kids back to the environment that they wake up in. So please experts save me the time and don’t put this section in a communication text books.
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Hi Communication wrestler,
ReplyDeleteI can’t believe these three premises as well. I really like your example for each one of them. And I also don’t believe that human nature can be sum up in three premises. I feel like they are ideal but not really apply to real life. If human are perfectible then we shouldn’t have crime anymore. If human are rationality, then why would we have so many different cults? I kind of raised my eyebrows when I was reading this section because I didn’t think it made much sense to me. I think these three premises are loosely constructed and need more revision.
-Sogo
I completely agree with you when you stated that if human beings were perfectible then we wouldn’t have jails or prisons or even a justice system. Human beings are always going to make mistakes and therefore we need these programs to take care of that problem. Another thing I agree with you on is when you talked about the California school systems. One of the biggest mistakes we have made as a state is cutting the finding for these after school programs. Children don’t get to choose the environment that they are forced to grow up in. if we keep cutting these programs then in a way we are telling these kids to go out and bad things like get into gangs because we don’t have to money to help them stay out of them!
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