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The Sin Of Summarising

Sunday, 2009 October 18 4:35 PM MDT — Arvada, Colorado UNITED STATES

Summaries act as a true matter of convenience, yet they commit a disservice when utilised improperly. How often do we neglect to truly read a book because we've already seen a summary of it? Imagine the disservice that results when we summarise a human being? Too often, there exist mechanisms to summarise and categorise people. The result is an attitude that as soon as I know your summary, I know all I need to know about you.

You are not your obituary. You are not your résumé. You are certainly not your Myers-Briggs type, and you are definitely not your world view. You are not your racial stereotypes. You are not your religion. You are neither your ancestry nor your nationality. You are not just the clothes you wear. You are certainly more than the food you eat and the drinks that you drink. You are not an abstract thinker. You are not a sequential thinker. You are not a Greek thinker. You are not a Hebrew thinker. You certainly do think, and you certainly do have thoughts. You are not your alma mater. You are not the neighbourhood that you grew up in. You are not the grades you got nor the awards that you received.

How many people really know you as opposed to have merely summarised you? How many people do you really know?

Quote to ponder: “The information encoded in your DNA determines your unique biological characteristics, such as sex, eye color, age and Social Security number.” — Dave Barry

Currently reading…
Don Quixote
By Cervantes.

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