Can we talk about thinking?

[coberst]

Can we talk about thinking?

We are born as unreflective thinkers; many of us die decades later, still unreflective thinkers.

Who ever told us that we need to think about thinking? Who told us that we must practice thinking? Just as we must practice throwing or hitting a ball to improve our ability to play sports, likewise we must also practice thinking if we wish to improve our ability to think.

Isn’t thinking just like breathing? We all breath and think; no one needs to practice such automatic things that our body does without our conscious action. Wrong! The body does handle breathing pretty well without our conscious management, but not so with thinking.

There is a difference between “naive thinking” and “sophisticated thinking”. Can the naïve thinker become a sophisticated thinker? The answer is yes; provided there is motivated practice and study.

A child clinging to her mother’s skirt is not an uncommon site. A child with wide eyes and a look of apprehension seeking security and assurance by remaining very close to his mother (his center of balance) is similar to the centricities we all carry forward and often remain with us until we die.

Our centricities, our centers of irrational influence, are often the ego and the group. I suspect that as we get older we focus less on the ego for guidance and more upon the social group. Our nation centric, our ethnic centric, our political centric forces provide us with illusions of security without any independent thinking on our own.

I think that it is worthwhile to focus our attention on the metaphors ‘egocentricity is a disease’ and ‘sociocentricity is a disease’. The cure for both diseases is self-consciousness. Being self-conscious permits us to combat the fever of irrationality caused by both tendencies.

Of the two I suspect sociocentricity causes us and our community the greatest harm. When our ego leads us to do stupid things the harm done is limited because we generally affect only our self and maybe a few others. Sociocentricity, however, can easily be identified as the cause of the destruction and death of many.

Ethno centric is one form of socio centric attitudes and behavior. Ethno centric is placing ones own race as the privileged group. This form of socio centric behavior is perhaps the most predominate and lethal form of social bias. Regardless of which group we belong to I suspect that one of the most important things one might do to make the world a better place in which to live is for all of us to become self-conscious of these innate human tendencies.

Basic concepts become weapons of warfare within social groups. Basic words such as capitalism, socialism, communism, democracy, freedom, oligarchy, plutocracy, evil, patriotism, terrorism, etc. are twisted and maneuvered to confuse, distort, and to excite members of a group one way or another.

I think that people often have difficulty distinguishing ideological uses of such words from their non ideological uses. What do you think?

It appears that the key question of an egocentric is “How can I get what I want and avoid having to change in any fundamental way?”

[Theory5]

....My Brain Hurts.....

Basic words such as capitalism, socialism, communism, democracy, freedom, oligarchy, plutocracy, evil, patriotism, terrorism, etc.

You forgot Anarchism. :-) (www.anarchy.ws)

This reminds me of when I read the book 1984, by George Orwell. In my opinion it all depends on your environment and education and ecouragement while you are growing up. That provides the basis to everything you do, think, and belive. You can grow up open-minded but naive and when something comes along that you are or have been interested in, or simply a different view of something boring, you could grow into a sophisticated thinker.

Regardless of which group we belong to I suspect that one of the most important things one might do to make the world a better place in which to live is for all of us to become self-conscious of these innate human tendencies.

I think that the naive thinkers are the ones least observant and aware of how the world is. In my experience these type of thinkers can be aware of what is happening and just not care thus forcing themselves to be naive. They can also be self-distructive because of their naiveness (is that even a word?). Most people in the world or even just the country do not relize that there is a different kind of lifestyle or even other types of government. This is mainly because most people did not experience encouragement to learn more, or even be self-aware.

[coberst]

Originally Posted by Theory5

....My Brain Hurts.....

I think that the naive thinkers are the ones least observant and aware of how the world is. In my experience these type of thinkers can be aware of what is happening and just not care thus forcing themselves to be naive. They can also be self-distructive because of their naiveness (is that even a word?). Most people in the world or even just the country do not relize that there is a different kind of lifestyle or even other types of government. This is mainly because most people did not experience encouragement to learn more, or even be self-aware.

Our (USA) educational system has left us with severe learning handicaps that we must struggle to overcome.

[Theory5]

Originally Posted by coberst

Our (USA) educational system has left us with severe learning handicaps that we must struggle to overcome.

Well put. What I dont understand is why they continue to teach us with the same methods if they dont work. One of my teachers thought that the statue of liberty was on Ellis Island and that purto rico isnt a protectorate of the US.
Another one of my teachers gets upset when I correct her. I just dont understand the way these people think. I always enjoy learning new things and I am grateful when I say something in error and someone corrects me.

Then the city next to me has a "no retention policy" which means they refuse to hold kids that fail back, so now we have people in my school who cant read. Its really sad, and annoying, when you hear the word Fajita actually pronounced with a "j" every time we have that for lunch.

It seems to me that if we had a better school system that cared more about education than money, then there would be more sophisticated thinkers, who could better the world. I mean, think of what Albert Einstin could have achived if he lived in a world where there was special education (he had dyslexia) and his talents were recognized and encouraged! Today people won't or it seems they can't sit back under a tree and just look at the world and think or read. If everyone just took a few hours a day to do that (during the summer, maybe during the winter they could take walks or something) this world would be different.

[coberst]

Our educational system is designed to graduate good producers and consumers. It has been designed to satisfy the self-interest of those corporate leaders who determine public policy. They do not want independent Critical Thinking citizens who are argumentative and difficult to manipulate.