Posted on 01/01/2022 4:13:30 AM PST by MtnClimber
William Golding (of Lord of the Flies fame) wrote an essay titled “Thinking as a Hobby” in which he outlined what he saw as the three stages of human thought. The first stage, he pointed out, wasn’t really thinking at all, but rather emoting about whatever information (or disinformation) parades through a brain’s synapses. This level of “thought” takes no actual knowledge, uses logic sparingly, if at all, and produces nothing but anger, bitterness, and only an occasional tickle of amusement. The second stage of thinking is actual, rational thinking, but only goes so far as to list the problems, to recognize the difficulties, to make the diagnosis. It is overwhelmingly negative -- the sky is falling, the sky is falling!
This is where most news commentary stops. Rarely do they dig deep into possible solutions and the defense of those proposed solutions. This level of thought requires a positive outlook, a strong sense of optimism and the courage to follow through. It requires creativity, knowledge of history, science, logic, economics, and rhetoric. It requires self-discipline. On the other hand, the negative woe-is-me level is easy; it’s a testimony to the sinful, complaining nature of man.
Man is naturally a whiner and so is the Devil. He lashes out at all of the positive divine institutions -- free will, marriage, family, and good government. He embraces chaos, calamity, hatred, division, and destruction. We cannot let his thinking taint ours. The thing is, the problems that beset this country today are not, in themselves, hard to solve. They each have simple, common sense solutions that often can be implemented at the local level and addressed with a modicum of expense. We just have to decide to do it.
Not that any of these solutions are effortless,
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
We have to stop electing sociopaths.
The majority have severe thinking disabilities.
Someone needs to do a simple, elegant, irrefutable article on the damage done by making decisions with our feelings, our emotions, vs. making decisions based on facts, logic, math, reason.
Of course the progs/libs will hate that. They have brainwashed the world to make decisions on how one feels. Every interview in the news is, “How did that make you feel?”
Would I be correct in saying that almost all the time, if you make a decision based on feelings/emotions, it will be wrong?
The lost piece here is that all feelings/emotions have an external cause and origin. Nothing wrong with feelings. They are normal. They become wrong when they become the basis for decisions.
IMHO.
When this country was founded, only men who owned property could vote. There were good reasons for that.
The news media’s job is not to report the news. It’s to push the narratives. It’s to play Kingmaker. The don’t push facts. They push conclusions
Yes. There are fairly reliable fMRI tests to detect sociopathy.
I'm sure Congress could pass a law requiring these simple tests on all officeholders and bureaucrats, aren't you?
Supposedly people reading for pleasure has drastically decreased since the rise of smart phones, especially among kids. Can’t imagine the rise of our screen culture is going to be positive for society.
Freegards
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Good article. Thanks for posting.
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