the superficial

in an age where critical thinking is for the squares, i often find myself surrounded by circular reasoning. actually, that may not be the best title: "recursive idiocy" may be more apt a description. where do i see this phenomenon today? in the transmutation of words, which once had underlying meaning and context, to labels, now used for simplistic characterizations that are both highly efficient and grossly inaccurate under scrutiny. for example: someone becomes a celebrity simply for being well known, or something is called art because its creator calls himself an artist, or using the word negro on a census form creates an uproar just because a word with multiple contexts has one negative context. in this world of politically correct, contextually incorrect, labels a child growing up today might think that the statement "Check here if you are of Negro descent" is more cause for concern than "African-Americans are at greater risk of unfair sentencing in the penal system."