Think like an Octopus
“On the other hand.” That’s the silver bullet. That’s all it takes to become a good thinker. It’s that simple. But on the other hand, it helps to notice still another hand.
I was sitting at the breakfast table, reviewing plans for my first philosophy class of the day. I was thinking specifically about the dialectic. Then I remembered that I had a problem student in that class. I only had three problem students in thirty-some years of teaching. This was one of them. He was one of those back row, disruptive whisperers. I had spoken to him a couple of times about it, to no avail. He seemed to have a lack of respect for me. So I shifted my mind from preparation for class to preparation for dealing with this aggravation.
I spent two years in the army as basic training officer. I have experience in sounding tough, and I can make the appropriate face to go along with the speech. I’ve never used that style in teaching. However, that morning, I was considering it. On the other hand, I could quietly inform him that if the whispers did not cease, he would receive an “F” in the class. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure that would be a fair course of action. In fact, he might dare me to try it (he was the kind to do that). On the other hand, I had to do something because he was disrupting the class. So, on the other hand . . . Wait a minute, how many other hands do I have?
On the other hand is the dialectical formula. It is the way. But on which other hand. Mentally, we have more than two hands. Our left hand has its own right and left hands, and they have theirs. We need to think on as many hands as possible. We need to learn to think like an octopus. An octopus can think “on the other hand” several times before he runs out of perspectives to consider.
The way to become a good thinker is to think like an octopus. Usually there are many hands to consider. Each hand has other hands itself. Don’t forget the left hand. Like a construction supervisor, hire other hands if they are needed. Don’t settle on an answer, conclusion, or idea until you have to because there are always these other hands to turn to. We will never have time to check them all out, but don’t quit early, especially if there is much at stake.
Think dialectically, consider others–even your enemies, maybe especially your enemies, and think like an octopus thinking on all eight hands. However, if we seek to examine all hands, can we ever make a decision?
At some point we have to cut off thought and act on the best judgment we can make at the time–always realizing that what we do may turn out wrong. We have no choice, however, but to use our best judgment at the time, however incomplete it may be.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Conjunctions and Decision-making
Written sentences end with a period–or, sometimes with a question mark or an exclamation point. Spoken sentences end with a full stop, at least they are supposed to. In many cases, however, they end with a comma–a slight pause–and continue with what is, in effect, a new sentences, just as I am doing now, with sentence joined to sentence in an almost nonstop sequence, often linked together with a conjunction and continue until they are interrupted.
Good thinking, dialectical thinking, doesn’t use periods; it always uses conjunctions. It doesn’t use periods because “no thought is ever complete by itself.” It always implies “and” or “moreover” or “furthermore. OTOH/BOTOH is always implicit.
Another issue. If no human statement is ever complete, how can we ever decide a course of action? On one hand we realize that there is more that should be considered, but on the other, life continually requires us to make decisions, to cut off debate and dialogue in order to act.
Immanuel Kant was one of the greatest critical thinkers ever. He fell in love and was to be married, but unlike most of us, in love he did not lose his head. He realized better than most that marriage entailed many considerations. As the engagement lingered on, other hands kept calling for his attention. No one has ever thought through marriage more carefully than Kant, but since there is always more to be considered, his beloved gave up and married another. Thoughtful Immanuel never married.
At some point we have to cut off thought and act on the best judgment we can make at the time–always realizing that what we do may turn out wrong. We have no choice, however, but to use our best judgment at the time, however incomplete it may be.
Good thinking, dialectical thinking, doesn’t use periods; it always uses conjunctions. It doesn’t use periods because “no thought is ever complete by itself.” It always implies “and” or “moreover” or “furthermore. OTOH/BOTOH is always implicit.
Another issue. If no human statement is ever complete, how can we ever decide a course of action? On one hand we realize that there is more that should be considered, but on the other, life continually requires us to make decisions, to cut off debate and dialogue in order to act.
Immanuel Kant was one of the greatest critical thinkers ever. He fell in love and was to be married, but unlike most of us, in love he did not lose his head. He realized better than most that marriage entailed many considerations. As the engagement lingered on, other hands kept calling for his attention. No one has ever thought through marriage more carefully than Kant, but since there is always more to be considered, his beloved gave up and married another. Thoughtful Immanuel never married.
At some point we have to cut off thought and act on the best judgment we can make at the time–always realizing that what we do may turn out wrong. We have no choice, however, but to use our best judgment at the time, however incomplete it may be.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Chapter 2/5
Not Thinking Is Dangerous
If you are not a DIALECTICal thinker, you will continually have problems that could easily be prevented, problems that are the result of misunderstandings on your part. Without the DIALECTIC, you are more likely to be blind-sided because you haven’t looked at the other side. You are more likely to have difficulty getting along with people who are important to you, because you haven’t taken seriously their unique perspective. You are more likely to regret the attendant results.
Some people believe that logic is the pathway to good thinking. Logic is very important and will make you a much better thinker, but logic alone is inadequate. Good simple logic makes our thought clear and precise, but that is not enough. As we will see in Part Two, logic is a component of the DIALECTIC. It is immeasurably useful, but has serious limitations.
Critical thinking is often pushed---in the university and in business--as the way to good thinking, but it also is inadequate. Thinking in the critical mode is, in the strict sense, an analytic process. Analysis, by definition and nature leads to disintegration; by itself it cannot integrate. Again, the DIALECTIC is a corrective to critical thinking.
Logic and critical thinking are both important. They are essential considerations if one is to become an exceptionally good thinker. But on the other hand . . .
Nor will it be enough that you have a lot of good common sense because, for one thing, “common sense” is a vague idea. It might even include the DIALECTIC, but everything depends on what you mean by “common” sense, and on who shares this sense in common with you.
The only way to become a good thinker is to think DIALECTICally, to make the DIALECTIC as natural as breathing. Isn’t it presumptuous to say it is the only way? The DIALECTICal answer to this affirms both the statement and the challenge. It is the only way, but by its very nature, the dialectic challenges the idea that the dialectic is the only way. It has told us that “there is always something more,” and that “we always might be wrong,” as well as “no human statement is complete by itself.” The dialectic tells us that there is more to good thinking than the dialectic includes. However, if there is more, that more is merely the other hand of the dialectic.
If you are not a DIALECTICal thinker, you will continually have problems that could easily be prevented, problems that are the result of misunderstandings on your part. Without the DIALECTIC, you are more likely to be blind-sided because you haven’t looked at the other side. You are more likely to have difficulty getting along with people who are important to you, because you haven’t taken seriously their unique perspective. You are more likely to regret the attendant results.
Some people believe that logic is the pathway to good thinking. Logic is very important and will make you a much better thinker, but logic alone is inadequate. Good simple logic makes our thought clear and precise, but that is not enough. As we will see in Part Two, logic is a component of the DIALECTIC. It is immeasurably useful, but has serious limitations.
Critical thinking is often pushed---in the university and in business--as the way to good thinking, but it also is inadequate. Thinking in the critical mode is, in the strict sense, an analytic process. Analysis, by definition and nature leads to disintegration; by itself it cannot integrate. Again, the DIALECTIC is a corrective to critical thinking.
Logic and critical thinking are both important. They are essential considerations if one is to become an exceptionally good thinker. But on the other hand . . .
Nor will it be enough that you have a lot of good common sense because, for one thing, “common sense” is a vague idea. It might even include the DIALECTIC, but everything depends on what you mean by “common” sense, and on who shares this sense in common with you.
The only way to become a good thinker is to think DIALECTICally, to make the DIALECTIC as natural as breathing. Isn’t it presumptuous to say it is the only way? The DIALECTICal answer to this affirms both the statement and the challenge. It is the only way, but by its very nature, the dialectic challenges the idea that the dialectic is the only way. It has told us that “there is always something more,” and that “we always might be wrong,” as well as “no human statement is complete by itself.” The dialectic tells us that there is more to good thinking than the dialectic includes. However, if there is more, that more is merely the other hand of the dialectic.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Tests Challenge Us
All human development occurs in the dialectical movement between an expanding vision of reality and the challenges that accompany this enlarged frame of reference. They accompany each other as surely as tests accompany classroom studies. A few instances: when a child conquers the challenges of speech, walking, the first grade, adolescence, entering the workplace, marriage. Each challenge conquered expands the borders of our vision; the broader field of vision presents new challenges.
Sooner or later the time comes when we decide that we have reached a satisfactory state of development. We close our borders and back off from significant further challenge. We have attained successful maturity or we are painfully conscious that we are unlikely ever to succeed. We live with a feeling either of adequacy or inadequacy. For the majority, this occurs by the time we are forty-five. By that age, most have already either begun to climb the ladder of success or given up hope and settled into what Thoreau called, “lives of quiet desperation.” For the former, their field of vision is working, and since it “ain’t broke,” they see no need to fix it, expand or extend it. The latter already have faced and lost too many challenges. They want no more tests of their ability. Persistent failure is painful.
All tests challenge us; all challenges test us. Personal maturity comes as we move toward a worldview without borders and as we accept the most threatening challenges to human well-being. This also serves as a measure of the health of a society. The American people need the leadership that will expand the borders of our national vision and accept the challenges that most threaten the well-being of that larger, world-wide vision. Whether we are alert to it or not, in this election year we are being challenged to accept the larger vision and its more subtle challenges.
Sooner or later the time comes when we decide that we have reached a satisfactory state of development. We close our borders and back off from significant further challenge. We have attained successful maturity or we are painfully conscious that we are unlikely ever to succeed. We live with a feeling either of adequacy or inadequacy. For the majority, this occurs by the time we are forty-five. By that age, most have already either begun to climb the ladder of success or given up hope and settled into what Thoreau called, “lives of quiet desperation.” For the former, their field of vision is working, and since it “ain’t broke,” they see no need to fix it, expand or extend it. The latter already have faced and lost too many challenges. They want no more tests of their ability. Persistent failure is painful.
All tests challenge us; all challenges test us. Personal maturity comes as we move toward a worldview without borders and as we accept the most threatening challenges to human well-being. This also serves as a measure of the health of a society. The American people need the leadership that will expand the borders of our national vision and accept the challenges that most threaten the well-being of that larger, world-wide vision. Whether we are alert to it or not, in this election year we are being challenged to accept the larger vision and its more subtle challenges.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Chapter 2/4
OTOH/BOTOH
In one sense all there is to becoming a better thinker is that we pause and think, on the other hand. But on the other hand, there is much more to it than this. Nonetheless, in the end, after we have considered the DIALECTIC more completely, on the other hand will mean a great deal more to you, and will still, in some sense, be the bottom line.
None of this requires that you become an intellectual or a philosopher. DIALECTICal thinking is for the everyday, moment-by-moment life decisions, dilemmas, and working relationships of life. It requires nothing more than the standard God-given equipment that comes with being human. Therefore, we all are included.
If we think effectively, we think, with two hands. We consider something “on the one hand,” and then realize or are told or somehow learn that “on the other hand” there is more to it than we had first realized. This is the basic pattern of good thinking. The acronym, otoh, botoh, has been suggested to help us remember the pattern, “On the One Hand, but on the Other Hand.”
Ever since Plato philosophers have called this way of thinking The DIALECTIC, the subject of this book. No other approach to understanding can match it in value. No idea can be of more practical value for all of us, almost any hour of the day, in almost any situation, no matter what we are involved in doing. The DIALECTIC is a necessary part of our approach to life if we would be wise in our judgments and conduct. By itself it is not sufficient to make us wise, but it is an indispensable element in our mental toolkit.
Again, you don’t have to become a scholar or a genius. You do not have to be “a brain,” at least no more brain than God gives to every normal or at least semi-normal human. All you need is the desire to improve your thinking, to develop a more useful understanding of other people and thus improve your relationship with them, and to make fewer mistakes in judgment. What this book presents is a method of thinking that many people use naturally; it is one part of our common sense. Don’t let the term, The DIALECTIC, throw you. Some people use the term in very sophisticated ways, but we will be using it in the broadest sense, a sense that comprehends the simplest and the most sophisticated and technical usages.
You may be just plain mentally lazy as I was, or think of yourself as mentally ordinary, but with the DIALECTIC, you can improve your life by becoming--rather quickly and easily--a better thinker than most of the people you deal with daily. It is almost effortless, and it is guaranteed. You may consider yourself a doer, not a thinker, but remember that thinking is doing, and that thought is required in deciding what to do, how best to do it, and how to evaluate the work when it is done. You can improve your performance simply by using the DIALECTICal method as accompaniment to everything you do.
In one sense all there is to becoming a better thinker is that we pause and think, on the other hand. But on the other hand, there is much more to it than this. Nonetheless, in the end, after we have considered the DIALECTIC more completely, on the other hand will mean a great deal more to you, and will still, in some sense, be the bottom line.
None of this requires that you become an intellectual or a philosopher. DIALECTICal thinking is for the everyday, moment-by-moment life decisions, dilemmas, and working relationships of life. It requires nothing more than the standard God-given equipment that comes with being human. Therefore, we all are included.
If we think effectively, we think, with two hands. We consider something “on the one hand,” and then realize or are told or somehow learn that “on the other hand” there is more to it than we had first realized. This is the basic pattern of good thinking. The acronym, otoh, botoh, has been suggested to help us remember the pattern, “On the One Hand, but on the Other Hand.”
Ever since Plato philosophers have called this way of thinking The DIALECTIC, the subject of this book. No other approach to understanding can match it in value. No idea can be of more practical value for all of us, almost any hour of the day, in almost any situation, no matter what we are involved in doing. The DIALECTIC is a necessary part of our approach to life if we would be wise in our judgments and conduct. By itself it is not sufficient to make us wise, but it is an indispensable element in our mental toolkit.
Again, you don’t have to become a scholar or a genius. You do not have to be “a brain,” at least no more brain than God gives to every normal or at least semi-normal human. All you need is the desire to improve your thinking, to develop a more useful understanding of other people and thus improve your relationship with them, and to make fewer mistakes in judgment. What this book presents is a method of thinking that many people use naturally; it is one part of our common sense. Don’t let the term, The DIALECTIC, throw you. Some people use the term in very sophisticated ways, but we will be using it in the broadest sense, a sense that comprehends the simplest and the most sophisticated and technical usages.
You may be just plain mentally lazy as I was, or think of yourself as mentally ordinary, but with the DIALECTIC, you can improve your life by becoming--rather quickly and easily--a better thinker than most of the people you deal with daily. It is almost effortless, and it is guaranteed. You may consider yourself a doer, not a thinker, but remember that thinking is doing, and that thought is required in deciding what to do, how best to do it, and how to evaluate the work when it is done. You can improve your performance simply by using the DIALECTICal method as accompaniment to everything you do.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Chapter 2/3
Thinking Invites Trouble
Be aware, however, that the DIALECTIC will bring new troubles into your life as you begin to recognize problems that DIALECTICal thinking has made you aware of but that you had rather not deal with. Moreover, you will find that you have to be careful in school, with your spouse, on the job, or wherever you are because others will not always appreciate the changes that clear thinking often calls for. So, on one hand, we want to do our own thinking and act on the basis of that thinking, but we need to be careful how we negotiate our relations with other people.
Therefore, before you read another sentence, be warned: thinking is dangerous; this is a dangerous book. When, in 1937, Lyndon Johnson first went to the United States House of Representatives, his fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn, House Majority Leader, counseled him: “Lyndon, the way to get along is to go along.” The truth is that any time we begin thinking, we are apt to make enemies, and in this, our one chance at life between the cradle and the casket, we need to make as few enemies as possible. One of the most dependable ways to avoid making enemies is to go along with whatever the majority thinks.
But, at the heart of good thinking is the realization that things we have been taught are not true. At least some of them, some of the time. Maybe even most of what we've been lead to believe. Once we accept the idea that authorities, even experts and professionals, could be wrong, we begin trying to figure why such things are allowed and accepted. If we come to think that we have figured out something that is nearer the truth, we may then decide to challenge some socially accepted truths, the conventional wisdom.
That is another danger that accompanies thinking: if we think on anything long enough, sooner or later we are likely to tell others what we have been thinking, or, in some other way, to put our thoughts into action. Any time we put our thinking on public display we have taken a step that is a quick and easy way to lose friends and alienate society. Societies cannot operate without consensus. Those who do not go along are commonly ignored or ostracized. They find they have become social misfits.
On the other hand, what are we to do if our mind or conscience will not let us “go along?” What are we to do if our mind will not walk away and find other things to think about? What if we insist on what we see as the truth? What if our mind will give us no rest until we do our own thinking?
What happens is, we decide that although thinking is dangerous, not thinking just might be more dangerous. Maybe socially accepted wisdom is a lie, even one that is widely acknowledged, but a lie that seems to be working well.
However, we find that this is one sleeping dog that we cannot allow to lie. Maybe error or ignorance seem to work better than the discovery and revelation of truth, but we suspect truth has never been given a fair trial. No matter what the cost, some of us are going to think. But if we are going to cross the accepted with any degree of confidence, it is important that our thinking be clear, comprehensive and cogent.
Be aware, however, that the DIALECTIC will bring new troubles into your life as you begin to recognize problems that DIALECTICal thinking has made you aware of but that you had rather not deal with. Moreover, you will find that you have to be careful in school, with your spouse, on the job, or wherever you are because others will not always appreciate the changes that clear thinking often calls for. So, on one hand, we want to do our own thinking and act on the basis of that thinking, but we need to be careful how we negotiate our relations with other people.
Therefore, before you read another sentence, be warned: thinking is dangerous; this is a dangerous book. When, in 1937, Lyndon Johnson first went to the United States House of Representatives, his fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn, House Majority Leader, counseled him: “Lyndon, the way to get along is to go along.” The truth is that any time we begin thinking, we are apt to make enemies, and in this, our one chance at life between the cradle and the casket, we need to make as few enemies as possible. One of the most dependable ways to avoid making enemies is to go along with whatever the majority thinks.
But, at the heart of good thinking is the realization that things we have been taught are not true. At least some of them, some of the time. Maybe even most of what we've been lead to believe. Once we accept the idea that authorities, even experts and professionals, could be wrong, we begin trying to figure why such things are allowed and accepted. If we come to think that we have figured out something that is nearer the truth, we may then decide to challenge some socially accepted truths, the conventional wisdom.
That is another danger that accompanies thinking: if we think on anything long enough, sooner or later we are likely to tell others what we have been thinking, or, in some other way, to put our thoughts into action. Any time we put our thinking on public display we have taken a step that is a quick and easy way to lose friends and alienate society. Societies cannot operate without consensus. Those who do not go along are commonly ignored or ostracized. They find they have become social misfits.
On the other hand, what are we to do if our mind or conscience will not let us “go along?” What are we to do if our mind will not walk away and find other things to think about? What if we insist on what we see as the truth? What if our mind will give us no rest until we do our own thinking?
What happens is, we decide that although thinking is dangerous, not thinking just might be more dangerous. Maybe socially accepted wisdom is a lie, even one that is widely acknowledged, but a lie that seems to be working well.
However, we find that this is one sleeping dog that we cannot allow to lie. Maybe error or ignorance seem to work better than the discovery and revelation of truth, but we suspect truth has never been given a fair trial. No matter what the cost, some of us are going to think. But if we are going to cross the accepted with any degree of confidence, it is important that our thinking be clear, comprehensive and cogent.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Chapter 2/2
Mental Habits
It is not easy to stop living by an unthinking, undeliberated, unconsidered acceptance of whatever is our community’s conventional wisdom, or by decisions we have made merely because, at the moment, they felt right. On the other hand, for others--antisocial mavericks--it is hard to break loose from their rebellious, reactive pattern of always thinking whatever is contrary to the established order. Thinking is not hard, but the will and determination to think, and to persist in it, this is hard, until it becomes a habitual, characteristic trait. Then, it is easy.
What I am saying is that it is easy to coast along, living by habit and the socially acceptable, without ever actively engaging the mind, just leaving it in neutral most of the time. The simple argument of this book is that once we understand the DIALECTIC, a smidgen of logic (Part Two of this book), and identify our own basic beliefs and ultimate goals (part three), thinking becomes easy. But it becomes easy only as we engage the gears of the mind and put it to work.
Thinking Invites Trouble
Be aware, however, that the DIALECTIC will bring new troubles into your life as you begin to recognize problems that DIALECTICal thinking has made you aware of but that you had rather not deal with. Moreover, you will find that you have to be careful in school, with your spouse, on the job, or wherever you are because others will not always appreciate the changes that clear thinking often calls for. So, on one hand, we want to do our own thinking and act on the basis of that thinking, but we need to be careful how we negotiate our relations with other people.
Therefore, before you read another sentence, be warned: thinking is dangerous; this is a dangerous book. When, in 1937, Lyndon Johnson first went to the United States House of Representatives, his fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn, House Majority Leader, counseled him: “Lyndon, the way to get along is to go along.” The truth is that any time we begin thinking, we are apt to make enemies, and in this, our one chance at life between the cradle and the casket, we need to make as few enemies as possible. One of the most dependable ways to avoid making enemies is to go along with whatever the majority thinks.
But, at the heart of good thinking is the realization that things we have been taught are not true. At least some of them, some of the time. Maybe even most of what we've been lead to believe. Once we accept the idea that authorities, even experts and professionals, could be wrong, we begin trying to figure why such things are allowed and accepted. If we come to think that we have figured out something that is nearer the truth, we may then decide to challenge some socially accepted truths, the conventional wisdom.
That is another danger that accompanies thinking: if we think on anything long enough, sooner or later we are likely to tell others what we have been thinking, or, in some other way, to put our thoughts into action. Any time we put our thinking on public display we have taken a step that is a quick and easy way to lose friends and alienate society. Societies cannot operate without consensus. Those who do not go along are commonly ignored or ostracized. They find they have become social misfits.
On the other hand, what are we to do if our mind or conscience will not let us “go along?” What are we to do if our mind will not walk away and find other things to think about? What if we insist on what we see as the truth? What if our mind will give us no rest until we do our own thinking?
What happens is, we decide that although thinking is dangerous, not thinking just might be more dangerous. Maybe socially accepted wisdom is a lie, even one that is widely acknowledged, but a lie that seems to be working well. However, we find that this is one sleeping dog that we cannot allow to lie. Maybe error or ignorance seem to work better than the discovery and revelation of truth, but we suspect truth has never been given a fair trial. No matter what the cost, some of us are going to think.
But if we are going to cross the accepted with any degree of confidence, it is important that our thinking be clear, comprehensive and cogent.
Mental Habits
It is not easy to stop living by an unthinking, undeliberated, unconsidered acceptance of whatever is our community’s conventional wisdom, or by decisions we have made merely because, at the moment, they felt right. On the other hand, for others--antisocial mavericks--it is hard to break loose from their rebellious, reactive pattern of always thinking whatever is contrary to the established order. Thinking is not hard, but the will and determination to think, and to persist in it, this is hard, until it becomes a habitual, characteristic trait. Then, it is easy.
What I am saying is that it is easy to coast along, living by habit and the socially acceptable, without ever actively engaging the mind, just leaving it in neutral most of the time. The simple argument of this book is that once we understand the DIALECTIC, a smidgen of logic (Part Two of this book), and identify our own basic beliefs and ultimate goals (part three), thinking becomes easy. But it becomes easy only as we engage the gears of the mind and put it to work.
Thinking Invites Trouble
Be aware, however, that the DIALECTIC will bring new troubles into your life as you begin to recognize problems that DIALECTICal thinking has made you aware of but that you had rather not deal with. Moreover, you will find that you have to be careful in school, with your spouse, on the job, or wherever you are because others will not always appreciate the changes that clear thinking often calls for. So, on one hand, we want to do our own thinking and act on the basis of that thinking, but we need to be careful how we negotiate our relations with other people.
Therefore, before you read another sentence, be warned: thinking is dangerous; this is a dangerous book. When, in 1937, Lyndon Johnson first went to the United States House of Representatives, his fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn, House Majority Leader, counseled him: “Lyndon, the way to get along is to go along.” The truth is that any time we begin thinking, we are apt to make enemies, and in this, our one chance at life between the cradle and the casket, we need to make as few enemies as possible. One of the most dependable ways to avoid making enemies is to go along with whatever the majority thinks.
But, at the heart of good thinking is the realization that things we have been taught are not true. At least some of them, some of the time. Maybe even most of what we've been lead to believe. Once we accept the idea that authorities, even experts and professionals, could be wrong, we begin trying to figure why such things are allowed and accepted. If we come to think that we have figured out something that is nearer the truth, we may then decide to challenge some socially accepted truths, the conventional wisdom.
That is another danger that accompanies thinking: if we think on anything long enough, sooner or later we are likely to tell others what we have been thinking, or, in some other way, to put our thoughts into action. Any time we put our thinking on public display we have taken a step that is a quick and easy way to lose friends and alienate society. Societies cannot operate without consensus. Those who do not go along are commonly ignored or ostracized. They find they have become social misfits.
On the other hand, what are we to do if our mind or conscience will not let us “go along?” What are we to do if our mind will not walk away and find other things to think about? What if we insist on what we see as the truth? What if our mind will give us no rest until we do our own thinking?
What happens is, we decide that although thinking is dangerous, not thinking just might be more dangerous. Maybe socially accepted wisdom is a lie, even one that is widely acknowledged, but a lie that seems to be working well. However, we find that this is one sleeping dog that we cannot allow to lie. Maybe error or ignorance seem to work better than the discovery and revelation of truth, but we suspect truth has never been given a fair trial. No matter what the cost, some of us are going to think.
But if we are going to cross the accepted with any degree of confidence, it is important that our thinking be clear, comprehensive and cogent.
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