Thinking  Lecture  #3  Broadening  Your  Perspective
 

Successful people are distinguished by the fact that they refuse to allow themselves to be defined (and limited) by others’ assessments.  Your problem is how to become a successful individual.  And here are some tips. 

Learn to look at the self honestly and objectively.  Remember, you spent the time in high school conforming to gain the crowd’s acceptance.  You spent your childhood thinking what and like your parents did.  You are still – as most adults are – selecting words and actions in part by what others want and expect from you.  Sometimes doing so is appropriate acculturation; sometimes doing so reflects lack of confidence and maturity. 

Shockingly, most people are slaves to popular culture – the result of being overly influenced by (primarily) TV, radio, magazines, and advertising.  Are you aware that studies show that upon graduation from H. S. people your age have spent 11,000 hours of their lives in the classroom as compared to 22,000 in front of the TV?  As a result, the dominant behavioral characteristics of young people (and too many of their role models) is self-indulgence, impulsiveness, and self-gratification.  This leads to one outcome: a lack of self-discipline. 

Self-discipline is one of two important factors that makes an individual more than just different from the rest; it makes an individual have character.  Character defines the worthiness of a person, the moral fiber of a person, and the command of a person.  Not surprisingly the other factor is one’s ability to think clearly.

3 steps to becoming an individual

$          Acknowledge the influences that have shaped your thinking.  Decide how other people’s convictions and actions have contributed to your attitudes and ideas.

$          Sort out and evaluate your ideas and attitudes, even your most cherished ones.  Compare them with other people’s not on the basis of familiarity or compatibility but on the basis of reasonableness in light of the evidence.

$          Choose the best ones; keep those worthy of your character.

Habits that hinder clear thinking

1.         Mine-is-Better starts in early childhood (my toy’s newer; my daddy’s stringer; my mommy earns more money, etc.).  Definition: the tendency to regard one’s present ideas, values, opinions, customs, and traditions as superior to another’s.   Mental positions as described above destroy objectivity and lead us to make self-flattering errors in our thinking.  People of character keep their egos from interfering with the search for truth.

2.         Face-Saving is another natural tendency arising in from our ego.  Definition: unlike mine-is-better, face-saving occurs AFTER we have said or done something that threatens to disturb our self-image or the image others have of us.

You may be familiar with it by the term defense mechanism.  Ever say, “It wasn’t my fault – I had no choice – so-and-so made me do it!”?  Such statements are merely excuses, and dishonest ones at that, pointing the finger in someone else’s direction.

A more dangerous form of face-saving is rationalizing – a dishonest substitute for reasoning whereby we set out to defend our ideas rather than to find out the truth about the matters concerned.

You can tell rationalizing apart from reasoning quite simply.  Reasoning: when your belief follows evidence.  Rationalizing: when the evidence follows what you believe. 

People who rationalize are constantly justifying their beliefs by ignoring or twisting evidence.  Rather than admit they are wrong, face-savers try to explain reason and evidence away.

3.         Resistance to Change is the tendency to reject new ideas and new ways of doing and seeing without examining them fairly.  Galileo was a victim of a culture that was resistant to change, so was the inventor of the plow, quite probably, so was the developer of general anesthetic, the advocate of autopsy, and the agitators for women’s voting rights; most religions’ major function may be resistance to change.

One cause of this resistance is laziness; another is excessive regard for tradition; another – stronger cause – is fear.  Resistance to change equates with resistance to learning, discovery, invention, creativity, and progress.  Clear thinkers give new ideas a chance to prove themselves.

4.         Conformity is harmful when we do something to belong to a group or avoid the risk of being different; it is, in short, an act of cowardice, a sacrifice of independence for a lesser good.  It leads us to stop thinking on our own and begin speaking only in the way others wish to hear.

President George W. Bush only wishes to hear people express a desire for war with Iraq; all others have been branded traitors (“with us or against us”).  It takes character to say, “I disagree.”  It takes clear thinking to be able to give your reasons for your disagreement. 

It takes nothing at all to be different just for the sake of standing out.  In fact, it is no more thoughtful than mindless conformity.

5.         Stereotyping is an extreme form of generalization that goes beyond the boundaries of reasonableness to the degree that it is a fixed UNBENDING over generalization, traditionally maintained.

You are familiar with racial, religious, and ethnic stereotypes.  Stereotypes less discussed and confronted are attached to homosexuals, the clergy, college dropouts, feminists, and male chauvinists.

Stereotyping denies comparison, sorting, weighing, selecting; it only allows storing.  It impedes the mind’s dynamic activities.  In short, your brain ceases to be a functioning organ and becomes a dusty warehouse.  Unbending over generalizations inhibit accurate perceptions.

6.         Self-Deception is the willful forgetting of whatever in a person’s past does not flatter or confirm a present point of view.  (Former) U.S. Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms may be prime examples of self-deceptive persons.  Once bigoted Dixiecrats who converted to the Republican Party when it became overtly conservative in comparison to the socially liberal Democratic Party in the late 60s-early 70s, they currently distance themselves from their former racist views because it is “politically correct.”

Other examples include some cancer patients (It’s probably not serious, so why see a doctor?” and addicts (“I can stop whenever I want to.”) – people who deceive themselves. 

Commonly, people deceive themselves about their own competency, first pretending to others they are knowledgeable, later coming to believe it for themselves.

Clear thinkers decide honestly what information they need to solve a problem, then acquire it, examine it, and evaluate it fairly.

Overcome the 6 bad habits that hinder thinking

The key is to examine your first impressions of problems and issues, especially strong ones prompting you to take a stand immediately, without weighing competing views.

Remember thobbing is wrong!

[“Thobbing”  The “th” from “thinking,” the “o” from “opinion,” and the “b” from “believing.”]

Whenever a person thinks the opinion that pleases them is the one that should be believed, they are thobbing, not thinking.  So, continue to think about your own thinking; it’s the best protection against thobbing.