The Review: "Brainwashed" by Seth Godin

The article “Brainwashed” is an interesting idea and one that I strongly agree with. The idea is that our education system has been set up so that we are taught to stride for being average and taking the safe road through life because that is reliable. Grodin advises seven layers or ways if you will, that we can reinvent, and thrive in society by pushing or "nudging" out of line and the system.

Of these layers is the idea of "Acknowledging the Lizard". The instinct that shuts us down when there is a chance at failure, this is the so-called “Lizard”. The Lizard, it is this fraction of our DNA that tells us to follow suite, obey the higher ups, do as we are told, and behave as a cog in a machine.  When one realizes there is this fear of failure, or  “Acknowledge the Lizard”, is when one will create something greatly innovative.

Another Layer that interested me was the seventh layer. This layer stressed that it was "the key to the others” – it is learning. It suggests that school is a misnomer and that it not all encompassed in the time one spend from kindergarten to college or graduate school. But more of a Life-Long process in which you are always in a state of learning and absorbing new things. When this thoroughly understood, one will learn that people rapidly change and that one can be outside the box and still flourish.

The Lizard layer is connected to blogging in that creative writing and spreading information is a artistic venture, in which you have to step out of you shell, always revealing the possibility of f failure. But taking the risk to express thoughts is worth the chance of that failure. The seventh layer is the very essence of blogging to share information, to learn. Like the Internet our minds are constantly expending, gaining knowledge, we don’t simple stop being school when we leave the institution of school. One must continue learning, sharing information between each other. Through blogging and these blogging assignments we are gaining the ability to learn on a larger scale, a global scale. These assignments make me a better and more rounded person, for the simple face through the blog ordinary people can share their thoughts, and these people could be on the opposite sides of the earth, sharing things that they would otherwise not have known.