Tag Archives: Critical thinking

Thinking For Ourselves

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“Truth is a pathless land….We have built in our images a sense of security – religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates thinking, relationships and daily life.

“These are the causes of our problems, for they divide us from each other in every relationship.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

We are self-determining. We make up our own minds. We think for ourselves. We cut through other people’s b. s. and discern the way things really are. Right?

Wrong. In fact, these concepts are almost completely bogus.

Our attitudes toward life and self are built on our life’s experiences. We are influenced in our thinking and reactions to events by other things that we may not even recall. We did not paint our own picture of the world and reality. In large part, it was shaped by things out of our control: other people’s ideas that they passed on to us verbally and by example, trauma (physical and psychological pain or harm), and the experiences that we have viewed through those questionable filters throughout our lives.

 

Shooting From The Hip

Like it or not, to a huge degree our thought processes are based on experiences that probably have little or no actual relationship to what’s happening in our lives now. These are the “images” that Sri Krisnamurti spoke of: the unconscious acceptance of the “symbols, ideas, beliefs” that were shaped by our perception of them, which were in turn shaped by things mostly outside of our control.

 

In short, unless we have learned to discern the difference between these ideas that have been colored by our beliefs, prejudices, and fears and the reality of what is happening, and unless we make a concerted effort to apply reason to our observation of the world, we aren’t really thinking for ourselves at all.

The Buddhist teacher Charlotte Joko Beck taught of a man who decided to take his little boat out on the lake one foggy morning. He really loved his little boat and took great care of it. Having just finished a careful paint job, he was quite proud of his work.

As he rowed through the mist, he suddenly felt a bump. Looking around at the bow, he saw that he had collided with another boat. He was immediately enraged: his new paint job had probably been marred, there might have been other damage, and who was that careless jerk who was paddling around on the foggy lake? [I know – but that’s the way we think, isn’t it?]

On closer inspection, he saw that the boat was empty, a line dangling into the water from the front.

“Oh, gosh! Someone’s boat got untied and drifted out into the lake. I’d better tow it to the marina for safekeeping until the owner can be located. Nice little boat; I’m sure the owner would hate to lose it!” In a few heartbeats, he realized that the facts were nothing like he’d thought and his perception of reality shifted.

How often do we fly off the handle when confronted with things that fail to conform to actual reality? How often do we react to our perceptions of fact, instead of considering other possibilities? How often do we disregard out part in something and seek immediately to shift the blame?

Obviously we can’t take the time to analyze every little thing that happens and causes fear or confusion (and aren’t they really the same thing?); but when we do have time, why not move out of the comfort of our pre-judged ideas, our fears, and the things we take for granted and look at life from a different angle? Are we afraid that we might find that we were actually wrong? Is it easier to float along in other people’s mental rut, or is it better to work at really thinking for ourselves?

Remembrance of Things Past

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I was just reviewing the list of blogs I subscribe to, and ran across the last entry of a writer friend who is no longer with us.  If you want to read it, you can find it here.  Marsha was  thoughtful, a fine writer and teacher, and a good person to have in your life.  She brought the pleasures of poetry and literature into the minds and hearts of thousands of students.  We all miss her.  A lot.

Reading her poignant entry got me to thinking about the idea of a “life well-lived.”  Who decides about that?  I am agnostic, so I don’t look forward to some Great Beyond.  As far as I know, this is it — the whole show, not a dress rehearsal.  (Although I generally hate being wrong, I wouldn’t mind being mistaken about that.  However, logic prevails.)  That being the case, the only life I expect to have beyond the grave is in the memories of people, slowly to fade until the wisps are carried away by the winds of time; incorporated as a tiny part of the whole, but unnoticed down the years by those to come.

So, unless I want to indulge in magical thinking I have to accept that the sum of my life is, perforce, my legacy as well.  And I have to ask myself whether I’ve lived that life so as to leave something worthwhile behind, however ephemeral.  There have certainly been times when I wouldn’t have wanted to look very hard at that question.  However, I’ve managed over the past 22 — almost 23 — years of clean and sober living to amass a record that I can look back on and recognize a totality of which I need not be ashamed.  Whether that would be the summation of others is none of my business.  We live in our own reality, and what’s going on in someone else’s is not our concern.

However, I think it behooves all of us to occasionally look back and think of our lives to date, and decide if they’re something we can be satisfied with.  If we feel as though we’re on the right track, maybe we can attend to the details a bit more closely.  And if it seems as though we are a bit short, then maybe we need to sit back and consider how we can re-map our journey. Perhaps our criterion should be something like, “Have I helped others as much as they’ve helped me.”

I don’t know.  What do you think?