A) Discuss Any Instances of Nonargumentative Persuasion or Pseudoreasoning and Explain

question 36

Essay

A) Discuss any instances of nonargumentative persuasion or pseudoreasoning and explain any slanting techniques you find in the following passage. (We'll comment on features we find obscure, unusual, or tricky.) B) Rewrite the passage in language that is as emotively neutral as possible but still retains the same informational content.
Members of the baby boom generation, the generation that is now becoming yuppies instead of growing up, refuse to see the light. After being the center of the universe during the sixties and seventies, they expected to own it by the mid-eighties. They grew up believing they would have tremendous jobs, wonderful houses, exotic travel, great marriages, and beautiful children as well as European "personal" cars, fancy music systems, high-tech kitchens, and wine in the cellar. But it isn't turning out that way for most of them. Having glutted the professional marketplace, they live on depressed salaries; their dependence on immediate gratification causes them to spend like sailors-on the right stuff-driving prices of their playthings through the roof.
But they are addicted to their ways. Those who moved to Manhattan can't bear the thought of living anywhere else but can't afford to live there. According to the New York Times, single-room-occupancy hotels that used to house the poor now contain tenants who cart in their stereos and tape decks, their button-down shirts, and their Adidas running shoes. One young woman says her bathroom is so filthy she showers with shoes on.
This insistence on doing it right bespeaks a refusal to grow up disguised as a commitment to-what?-"quality of life?" One no-longer-really-young professional says, "It used to be you moved to the suburbs for the children. But on some level we still think of ourselves as children." Peter Pan, call your office.
-Very freely adapted from George Will, "Reality Says You Can't Have It All," Newsweek

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Definitions:

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.

Rationalist

One who claims that most human knowledge comes through reason.

Memories

The faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information, or the recollections themselves.

Outstanding Events

Exceptional or remarkable occurrences that stand out from ordinary events.