Resist Our Culture of Bullshit
Comedian and speech writer, Jon Lovet, hits a home run with this commencement speech, encouraging new graduates, or anyone interested in changing the world, to focus our attentions on what he calls our greatest threat today:  a communication system saturated with exchanges that are 'just true enough not to be a lie.'

"One of the greatest threats we face is bullshit.  We are drowning in it.  We are drowning in partisan rhetoric that is just true enough not to be a lie."

For those not familiar with Harry Frankfurt's work, On Bullshit, check it out because it makes a related argument.  I have writting about Frankfurt before, so you can find links to youtube interviews, videos of him reading his entire essay, and the full text of the essay in earlier blogs.

Lovet continues: 

"We are drowning in industry sponsored research, in social media imitations of social connections, in legalise, in corporate double-speak.  It infects every facet of public life, corrupting our discourse, wrecking out trust in major institutions...making it harder to achieve anything."

Following Fitzgerald, Lovet contends, we need to learn to hold two opposing views in our mind at the same time, because this is how we navigate the real world without falling prey to the suckers choice of either/or thinking and we learn to effectively grapple with whatever problem or conflict we are facing, together.  So he suggests nesting the dualisms, engaging with the paradox...

Be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience,

This means, while you may have a different point of view because you bring fresh eyes and should speak up or because you are wrong and should listen to those with more experience, your challenge it to, over time, by engaging honestly and lovinging...

Learn to strike the right balance,
(Lovet adds that 'it helps to be very charming')

Be honest about what you do know and what you don't.

Push back against the noise and nonsense of a bullshit culture with greater authenticity and a demand for greater authenticity, like we see in President Obama, in Elizabeth Warren and Chris Christie and Rand Paul, Jon Steward, Louis CK...