Tag Archives: Critical thinking

Hannah Arendt And the Importance of Critical Thinking

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Hannah Arendt is visiting me this morning!  Yes, she dropped by in the form of one of her books and I am fully taken by her grasp of the Hitler era and the workings of the mind. In scholarly culture, if you think of totalitarianism you inevitably think of this woman because of her book, “Origins of Totalitarianism.”  But her visit this morning is via another book of hers, “The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation of How We Think.”

We usually do not think about “thinking” because we are too busy thinking, too busy with the white noise we are accustomed to. To “think about our thinking” is to bring to bear thought upon the very process of our “thinking,” or cognition. This complicated involution of the mind is one dimension of the thinking process and is commonly called, “critical thinking.”  Arendt’s work posits the notion that if we are not willing to employ  “critical thinking” there is a sense in which we are not thinking at all but are “thought” by what are merely the machinations of our unconscious mind.  As a result of this, we are carried along life’s way by a subterranean conglomerate of unacknowledged premises and assumptions which do the “thinking” for us. Someone once said, “Our thinking is but belated rationalization of conclusions to which we have already been led by our desires.”  In simple terms, “We think what we want to think.”

This is a very complicated vein of thought I am presenting here and merits further explanation; but that would take me too far from what I am trying to present.  In simple terms, Arendt teaches us that if we never get beyond “thinking what we want to think” we become easy prey to totalitarianism.  There is sense in which we are imprisoned by our very thinking and will make decisions that can be catastrophic in the long run.  This is what Socrates told us about in his famous “Cave” allegory, a delightful summary of which can be found in a cartoon—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA

Here is a brief selection from Arendt’s “Life of the Mind”:

Non-thinking, which seems so recommendable a state for moral and political affairs, also has its perils. By shielding people from the dangers of examination, it teaches them to hold fast to whatever the prescribed the rules of conduct may be at given time in a given society.  What people get used to then is less the content of the rules, a close examination of which would lead them into perplexity than the possession of rules under which to subsume particulars.

The “non-thinking” which Arendt’s work explores relies heavily on that term, “subsume particulars.”  This refers to taking in what we read or hear and “subsuming” it into “categories” which lay unexamined in the realm of perception.  Here in perception, as opposed to cognition, one can reject anything coming his way that is antithetical to this perceptual field.  Within the perceptual field lies unquestioned assumptions and biases which almost always “dictates” our thinking, ruling out anything not consistent with our view of the world.

Knowledge is Capricious

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Daniel Boorstin, a noted American historian declared in his book, “The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself,” that, “More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowing.” Boorstin in this quote had gleaned from his study of history that the comfort of “the feeling of knowing” often, if not most of the time, would triumph over knowledge itself.  Throughout history we have records of cultures in which “the feeling of knowing” proved to lead to their demise while letting that “feeling” give way to some critical thinking could have allowed them to continue, though with a moderated view of reality.

It is comforting to feel that one knows, permitting one to “know” that one knows.  It is so comforting that human nature has hard-wired us to prefer “knowing that we know” in the interest of preserving our tribe.  But when the world grows so small…as we are now experiencing…then “knowing what we know” begins to compete with other tribes who “know that they know” with equal conviction. Then violent conflict ensues unless leadership is available which will direct us to tolerate the notion that diametrically opposing ideas of reality can co-exist. There is no need to attempt to obliterate “them” just because we see “them” as, “not knowing correctly.”

The core issue is the comfort of “feeling that we know” not understanding the wisdom of poet W. H. Auden who told us that, “feeling knows no discretion but its own.”  Auden knew that our view of the world is not a rational matter, but one whose origin lies beneath the surface in the murky realm of feelings, closely akin to the unconscious.  But to recognize this truth is to take away the certainty that we can have in believing our beliefs and discounting anything or anyone that threatens them.  Another word for this realm of feelings is the heart, that center of our being which is unlocked only when we are willing to forego the tyranny of rational thinking and permit the grace of a non-tyrannical rationality which is quickened with the intuitive wisdom of the heart.

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

“The Moon is Made Out of Cheese”

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The following is a facetious reverie I utilize socially on occasion to illustrate the lunacy that we all wallow in occasionally.  Bear with me.  There is a point to it.

Wow, I woke up this morning and I suddenly realized that the moon is made out of cheese!  Furthermore, I knew that this insight was profound and relevant to the entire world so I immediately began to formulate a plan whereby I could spread this very important insight.

I started by canvassing my neighborhood and though many refused to open the door, some laughed at me, there were a handful of people who, knowing how special and gifted I was to begin with, immediately said, “Hey, you have a point there!  I’ve always had thoughts like that myself but didn’t have the courage to speak of them.”

So we began to meet regularly and started each meeting with an assessment of those in the neighborhood who had not “seen the light” and had so rudely refused the good news that we had brought.  We took great comfort in the realization that most people cannot handle the truth, stubbornly keep their minds and hearts in the darkness, and refuse to allow enlightenment to enter.  Often, as these meetings ended, we would be in tears as we lamented the fate of those who had stubbornly refused to acknowledge the truth that we offered.

I must make a long story short and summarize.  This initial group did grow and at some point our initial band of seven faithful souls expanded to twenty-three.  We formally organized and, of course, since I was the source of this inspiration I announced that I was the leader of the group…and also the treasurer…and that I was the final authority on some of the fine points about the moon being made out of cheese.

At this point, trouble started.  One gentleman brought up the question, “Well, what kind of cheese is it?”  I was a bit taken aback as I knew without a doubt that it was American cheese but another dared to suggest, “No, it is cheddar.”  Still another affirmed that it was American cheese but argued that it was Velveeta.  It took a lot of argument, and at times intense anger, but I managed to convince the second gentleman that the Velveeta notion was heresy and he agreed with me.  But the cheddar proponent was adamant about his viewpoint, and convinced three others he was right, and they separated from our group and focused on developing a belief system around the moon being made out of cheddar cheese.

My point here with this lunacy is, once again, “Don’t believe everything you think.”  Those who do, lacking the capacity to think critically, are subject to easily being influenced by a seductive and/or intimidating person.  Whatever our “pet” thoughts are, it does not hurt in the least to subject them to a bit of critical thinking.  I like T.S. Eliot’s observation on this note, encouraging us to, “live in the breakage, in the collapse of what was believed in as most certain and therefore the fittest for renunciation.”  “Pet” thoughts that have value can withstand this type of scrutiny and even flourish as a result.  This makes me think of something I read decades ago about how to make a poem, “Grab a word and pull on it.”  Grabbing a word or a thought and “pulling on it” with critical thinking can help ferret out the value…if any…if the thinking.  The less value in the vein of thought that grips one’s soul, the less likelihood that any critical thinking will be brought to bear upon it.

Each of us have passing thoughts.  That is good.  But we can be selective about which one’s we give any energy to and if it is something that tends to promote isolation, we might take pause.  We might ask, “Do I really believe this?”

Thinking Outside of the Box With Comedy

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I’ve always been blessed/cursed with “thinking outside of the box” though most of my life I’ve spent carefully trying and or pretending to do otherwise.  Here in this blog I like to focus on figures I have come across…past and present…who not only think outside of the box but often even dare to think outside of the box that the box is in!  Yes, that is a scary notion and can be dangerous as comedian  Robin Williams demonstrated so tragically.

Here I want to share a video link to another pair of comedians who push the envelope even further than Williams, at times venturing into anarchy or apparent nihilism.  But their intent is comedy and by sharing this skill of theirs they can certainly illustrate features of this human comedy that each of us plays a bit part in.

Keye and Peele here are spoofing President Obama, with one of them portraying Obama the straight man being very Presidential.  But then the other portrays another dimension of the President, an outlandish, outspoken, bombastic black man who is very angry.  In this spoof we see a good-natured illustration of the human comedy—we all have at least two dimensions to our personality, one in which we perform according to social convention and the other in which, if we had the liberty, we would say what we really would like to say.  This is very much related to the success of Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump who is at the top of the polls largely because he says things that more conventional candidates would never dare to say.

(http://www.cc.com/video-clips/0py5fm/key-and-peele-exclusive—obama-s-anger-translator—meet-luther—uncensored)

Here is another version of the same skit, this time featuring President Obama himself playing himself at a National Press Club Dinner.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6NfRMv-4OY)

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O’bama faking terrorist threat!!!!

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“Yeah, O’Bama and his cohorts are making up this terrorist threat for 9/11 just to divert attention from a failing economy!”

No, once again, I don’t really believe that.  I made it up!   But if I happen to hate him and/or “liberals”, I am inclined to interpret news in a fashion to confirm my bias and therefore arouse passions in similarly uncritical thinkers to hate him/them like I do.  It is similar to the prophets of doom and catastrophe-monger-ers–they are full of existential insecurity and dread (i.e. the poison of self-loathing) and thus compulsively announce, “The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!”  The simpleton “birthers” and “O’bama is a Muslim” crowd are guilty of the same lack of critical thinking.

Now, conservatives are going to interpret O’Bama and liberalism from their perspective.  And they should!  We need different perspectives, certainly the conservative one.  But it is important that conservatives, or liberals, or libertarians pause briefly before they make pronouncements and consider, “Now, am I just grinding my axe again?”  Now most of us will, after that pause, go right ahead and grind our axe.  I know I will!  But it is important to pause, and in that pause, from time to time we might learn that there is another way of looking at things.  And, it is important to look at things differently on occasion.

And this touches on a core issue in our culture right now—what is real and what is unreal.  I am of the conviction (i.e. “bias”) that “real” is a very nebulous term.  We are now at a point in our species development where we need to embrace the nebulous nature of reality and be willing to re-define a lot of the “categories” that we fall into and into which we project our world.  But this kind of “sophistry” is anathema to the hyper-conservatives who are not willing, or able, to compromise with what they know to be “real.”  An old fundamentalist bromide sums up this attitude, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.”