Michael Hyatt

Mike, thanks for sharing this video.  It’s funny and makes a great point.

I think part of the issue is that right now our culture is very adverse to authority, arrogance and conflict.  We don’t want to offend anyone or come off as know-it-alls, so we state our opinions in ways that communicate to others that they can disagree with us and we’ll still be OK with them.  That’s good in some ways, but I think we’ve taken it to such an extreme that we often just sounding wishy-washy.

haha. totally hilarious and good insight.

Love the you tube clip

This is a sad commentary, but spot on. Kudos, Taylor. Thanks for the challenge. And thank you, Michael, for sharing.

I think you shared this with us before but it was worth watching again – like totally.  The way people speak today drives me batty.  Just promise me that in October you will go to Vail, Colorado and not Vale (wherever that is!).

This video could be the start of a new wave of declarative sentences, you know?  Or not.  Whatever.

Wonderful video. It’s been interesting to me in raising 20-somethings and teaching college students in this past decade how simply uttering declarative statements are taken as argumentative and considered “yelling,” and being truthful is offensive. 

Consider that many students and parents believe grades should be geared toward effort and not skill–then we begin to understand how this mindset has permeated our culture, corporate and otherwise.

In the news business, while presenting both sides of an issue formerly was seen as objective reporting, advocacy journalism is on the rise, lest readers be offended because they don’t understand the basics of  letting the reader decide–and many are too lazy to use critical thinking skills to do this–something I feel is key in the discussion about declarative versus non-declarative statements. You have to be able to use critical thinking skills to arrive at a good decision and not just be ambivalent or apathetic.

I was appalled in 2008 when covering the campaign speech of a presidential hopeful the night before the election in Jacksonville, Fla. Even as I had felt a growing sense of this at rallys leading up to the election, I was shocked at the lack of diversity. There was NO dissent allowed. No signs, no buttons, no shirts. As lines of people waited, they were informed that unless they were supporting the speaker, they need not be present. I’m not suggesting wild-eyed persons who seek to disrupt a public event are granted entry, but I am suggesting that in past years I have seen groups of people wearing shirts for an opposing candidate stand quietly to the side, listening carefully while a candidate shares his/her opinion. After all, it was the night before the election. It was as if a campaign wanted to limit opportunities for a free exchange of thought. Now that’s limiting.

In the 90′s, those of us from California liberally sprinkled the word “like” throughout our speech. I don’t know why. Never thought about it. Now, even professionals seem to get away with using the equivocating “whatever” — something I shut my children down for using with me when they were teens. 

Thanks for sharing this.

I attended the DCW in the early 90′s. It was great then and I’m sure even better now.

Awesome.

I love being entertained while my toes are being stepped on…it’s therapeutic :). That was great…& helpful!