Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung (1875-1961) once said, "Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge." I think Jung hit this one out of the park. People, in general, are lazy thinkers. They try to minimize their thinking as much as possible, thus the reason my social psychology professor in college once told my class that human beings are "cognitive misers." I think this explains in part why people have become so reliant on reality television -- or, more broadly, TV in general -- for entertainment. In this era of Netflix and streaming content, the last thing most people are thinking about is reading Shakespeare for leisure. Technology, moreover, seems to be exacerbating the problem. The easier things become, the less inclined we are to think critically to arrive at solutions to problems. And why don't people want to think? Because it's difficult, taxing, strenuous. Most people wish to spend as little brainpower as poss...

Thanks to how easy technology has made everything for us, people are becoming lazier and lazier by the minute. At work, people would rather wait five minutes for the elevator than take the stairs. And as I've stressed in some of my other posts, people are relying heavily on technology to do everything from send out wedding invitations to wish people a Happy Birthday. The world has gone digital -- in the process, our relationships with people have grown more impersonal. Traditional Hallmark cards? Written letters sent by mail? These things have gone the way of the dodo bird. While technology certainly has made it possible to do things at the push of a button -- things our ancestors could only dream of -- it has also made us lazy and complacent. I've said it before and I'll say it again here: I think people are spending too much time watching TV and surfing the web. This has contributed in part to what pundits and academics have been saying for years: Society is b...

Remember the days when people could turn on the TV and find MTV playing music videos, the History Channel offering history-based programming, and the Discovery Channel airing science-oriented shows? It seems those days are long gone. Networks have greatly deviated from their original programming in favor of reality shows that pit washed-up celebrities against each other, feature strangers attempting to co-exist in an abandoned setting for an extended period of time, and -- get this -- follow people as they go on dates in the nude. If you're wondering why these shows have become the rage, there's a simple answer for that: they generate high ratings, which means that advertisers demand that their commercials be sandwiched between them. In other words, it's where the money is at, so networks refuse to cease producing them. An even bigger question, I think, is why people seem so interested in shows like "Keeping up with the Kardashians," "The Real Housewive...