Benefits of becoming a better thinker

Gabriel Wilensky

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ou may be wondering if you should learn what you should say instead of saying what you actually think, and the answer is yes, it will. This will happen as a result of having a better, clearer understanding of your own thoughts. Once you learn how to think about your thoughts, you will be more effective at rejecting those that stem from a prejudice you may have, or a bias, or even a flaw in logic. Learning or practicing these skills will lead to better thinking, which will help you in your personal or professional life as you are faced with complex situations or problems.

Perhaps you believe that your thinking is not as logical as you would like, but in that case rest assured that one of the things we’ll be focusing on is the improvement of your ability with informal logic, that is, the kind of critical thinking and reasoning skills that help you solve problems, assess and defend arguments, and make effective decisions in your daily life.

Once you learn how to think about your thoughts, you will be more effective at rejecting those that stem from a prejudice you may have, or a bias, or even a flaw in logic.

Maybe you are wondering whether the people of a community or even country should think the same way about important issues, and you wonder if this is good or bad, or whether you should try to conform to the established norms. But that is the type of ethnocentric or sociocentric worldview that is hammered into us as we grow up. We do not really understand the extent to which we have internalized the prejudices of our society or culture, and as a result we tend to put our own culture, religion or nation above all others. This has other negative ramifications too, as we uncritically accept any negative description of anyone who thinks differently from us. We end up defending our tribe at all costs. We fail to distinguish our culture’s norms, requirements and taboos from universal ethics.

Also, if you run into issues where you feel like you get ripped off and are not sure what to do about it, then hopefully the series of articles here on avoiding being manipulated will be helpful to you. There’s no question we are ripped off, manipulated or misled in many ways by politicians, advertisers, and writers of all stripes on the popular shows or movies we watch, the news we consume, the ads we are exposed to, or the Internet websites we read. The important thing is to be skeptical and critical of what we see, read or hear.

We do not really understand the extent to which we have internalized the prejudices of our society or culture, and as a result we tend to put our own culture, religion or nation above all others.

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What’s really possible in the realm of improving your thinking skills? Why does this matter? This is ultimately what Thought Academy is all about: helping you through a transformation from the type of thinker who may not be even aware of the natural flaws in their own thinking, which, by the way, all of us have, into the type of thinker who becomes mindful of these flaws and makes a conscious effort to overcome them.

As a critical thinker you strive to reduce the egocentrism and ethnocentrism we are all born and indoctrinated with as children, and you will move closer to being an ideal citizen of the world.

You know, everyone thinks; it’s clearly in our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, if left to itself and given no direction, is biased, prejudiced, distorted, uninformed, and partial. This is tragic, because most people are unaware of this and never make an effort to go above the state of unreflective thinking. And this in itself leads to pain and suffering to themselves and everyone around them. It’s costly in terms of money and quality of life. So, it behooves us as human beings to try to become better. No one is born being an expert pianist or tennis player, and no one is born being an expert thinker. Thinking, like tennis, is a learned skill that needs to be learned and practiced. It needs to be systematically cultivated.

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s you become a better critical thinker you will consistently attempt to live in a more fair-minded way. You will live a more rational and reasonable life. You will strive to consider the rights, feelings and needs of others. You will feel more empathy towards not only the people around you, but all the people of the world. This will happen because as a critical thinker you strive to reduce the egocentrism and ethnocentrism we are all born and indoctrinated with as children, and you will move closer to being an ideal citizen of the world. You will be able to more effectively use the intellectual tools critical thinking offers to assess, analyze and improve your thoughts. You will become more aware of our tendencies to fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, distortions, irrationality, prejudices, biases, uncritically accepted social norms and taboos, selfish interest and vested interest. And, you will take active steps to fight all that in yourself and others.

So, let’s go on this journey together. The future looks bright.

What do you think? Share your thoughts with the Thought Academy community in the Comments section below.

GET BETTER AT MAKING GOOD ARGUMENTS!

Do you want to be able to tear apart a bad argument? Enter your information to get our FREE exercises so you can practice how to break a deductive argument into its components!

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