Amanda is right, it really helps to have someone, a teacher, a signficant other, but hopefully a parent who can teach you to use your mind. Many parents teach kids to be prejudiced, or throw temper tantrums, or just to shut up and feel stupid. It's all good for my business.
Here are some examples from the news of people who did not have such good teachers:
Judging from yesterday's NY Times "Week in Review" section, it seems like they are trying to compete with "The Daily Show."
On the top of the second page, where they run "The High Ground." They first show Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, admitting that he committed a very serious sin. Then, since they are so nuanced, two pictures away is the picture of the man from the Iranian government confirming that they just executed a man for adultery by stoning him to death.
See, it isn't just here in the U.S. that fo;ks guilty of sloppy and hypocritical thinking.
Then they have the picture of the Pope, who decided on his own, that his church is the best. Good thinking there. Based on....?
No picture of Michael Chertoff, our Homeland Security guy, who "had a feeling" that we may be in for some kind of trouble. I had that same feeling when we invaded Iraq, except mine was based on a slightly more than minimal knowledge of history, and what has always happens when a very distant power invades a weaker country with a different culture. His feeling was based on ....?
I agree with William James, that experience is really the only way to begin to amass knowledge. But you can refine that kind of knowledge by thinking about what you have experienced, and then you can create new experiences to test what you think, and learn from that. But it really does take a lot of work.
Except that after a while, it really gets to be fun, and even HELPFUL.
Still, it is so much easier to believe than to think.
And it is VERY difficult to allow ourself to reject what you once beleived, even when the evidence is very obvious. (ask George; ask anyone really).
4 comments:
It does take time and work.
Between you, me and the Internet, I needed about 6 years to actually commit myself to it.
But I'm relieved to note that interesting things have been happening, really quickly, once I started asking myself "And your feeling is based on?..."
I consider myself a problem solver. I have no recollection of how I became one, however. My mother is not good at it, my father was a great problem solver but I didn't grow up around him. In your opinion, is it possible to inherit that trait?
Isn't the reason Jung fell out with Freud because he (Freud) wanted Jung to believe in one of his own (Freud's) theory and make it a dogma?
There's a very interesting video/interview of Jung on YouTube about death. when asked "do you believe that death is an end?", Jung replies "I don't believe, I must have a reason"...
there's much more to it, though. check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eenmBDU_k3o
"Still, it is so much easier to believe than to think."
so much of my life seems to come back to this refrain. that, and "don't ever judge." bites me on the ass every time.
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