Thought Development−Exercise 2
We live in an age where people have given over their thinking to others. In such an environment, opinion formation becomes outsourced. Rare are those, now, who have their own nuanced thought and position on anything.
The tendency is to gulp down some narrow stream of pre-chewed ideology and be energized by it's quick uptake into the blood stream. The act of chewing is where eating begins. One needs to distinguish where the thorns are to spit it out and gag when one tastes something foul. How often, even the nobler ones, neglect this vital act and peruse an unhealthy path in thought processing.
I confess, some of this can also be attributed to the cultural forces buffeting us. With the insufficiency of time, deluge of information, proliferation of technology, virality of new media, and increase in unconscionable capitalist business models, the world is incentivised to lean on recommendations to stay on top of information.
Thus the intersection of these have created a fertile breeding ground for dissemination of skewed and polarized thinking, catalysing the modern crisis of thought erosion. As a collective, modern human beings have easily given up their USP that helped them evolve this far.
As I continue from Exercise 1, I continue to lean on Nick Milo in developing baby muscles in opinion-forming skills. Consider them the planks to develop the opinion forming core. As mentioned in the previous post, abstain from referring to external resources as you do this exercise.
The prompts he offers are:
______ is good because…
______ is bad because…
______ causes…
Allow me to continue using my previous muse, Elon Musk, to illustrate this exercise in a ten minute timeframe. Here I go:
Elon Musk is good because he innovates and deploys technology in a way that is sensitive to earth's upkeep (Tesla is what I have in mind here) as well as ushers progress through technology.
Elon Musk is bad because his business model caters to the comfort and advancement of the rich and they (the rich) spend on what he offers with abandon, causing him to be even richer. He could use his amazing brains to make the life of the unfortunate better but he does not.
Elon Musk causes the gap between rich and poor to widen. Most of what he offers does not benefit the public but only the rich. I am not aware of his stance towards social causes. I remember he once mentioned that he would risk investing in alleviating global poverty. But his actions do not seem to follow such statements. To be fair, his offer of great electric cars have offered a direction for the next generation of mobility. If that picks up, he would have contributed a lot to decrease greenhouse effects and save the planet.
This was not easy for me because I had not given Elon Musk any serious thought till now. As I was typing this post, I was forced to contemplate and write, drawing from my own vague memory. I encourage you to engage in a similar exercise and flex those thought (and memory) muscles.
Once you are done with it, please feel free to write your opinion following the same prompts on:
Air-conditioners
Sleep
Democracy in India
High-rise buildings
The only thing that holds a person back from engaging in such baby step exercises is their own lethargy conditioned by prolonged inaction of actual thinking. Thinking does take effort. Unless one is self- motivated, they would not embark on the journey of thought development. They should tap into deep primal reservoirs because continued evolution of the species is depends on this.
As an optimist, I believe the primal features of the human species will eventually sense the threat and go through a collective self-corrective process. Though much damage has been inflicted by unprincipled capitalism and greed, and we will continue experiencing the spasms from various breaches, we will eventually emerge as a species from the various crises our planet has been experiencing.
We have the opportunity to minimize this damage by just rebuilding our thought muscles. Thought development is simple but not easy. A daily investment of fifteen minutes will compound over time. It will slowly seize everyday opinion-forming opportunities and unleash confident and reasonable personal assessments of the world around. Each of us has, not just the opportunity of exercising this muscle but the responsibility to do so.