Enlightenment Theory and Criticism

This week, Pope’s Essay on Criticism was my favorite of the provided readings. This section in particular stood out to me:

'Tis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill
Appear in Writing or in Judging ill,
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' Offence,
To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense

I think that this is very important in a society where so much of the information we receive is transmitted verbally and via the internet.

                One prime example of information being verbally misconstrued in my life is through my friend Nick.  Nick likes to mix accurate information with what he thinks is true and sometimes even what he knows as false.  Before I got to know him and was able to identify when he was adding little bits of flair to his “facts,” I often took his words to be true.  I even told other people some of the information he had given me, believing it to be true.  This misleading of the senses accounts for thousands of inaccurate statistics we soak up and spew out to our fellow peers, further misleading them.

                The internet is just as bad as my friend Nick.  The internet has become extremely useful in many ways, but also allows for the distortion of many truths.  Sites like Wikipedia or others that allow anonymous posting allow people who aren’t experts to sound like experts.  Another teacher was just telling me how a student had cited a random website in their paper.  It turns out this website was created by a 6^th grade class for a project and most of the information was flawed, but the presenter had believed all of it.

                Due to this I complete understand the desire for bad writing over convincing but untrue writing.