Rational Thinking I am starting this blog with a topic which seems boring but I really believe that it is a tool which has the potential to change the world. It is rational thinking itself that has inspired this blog and I hope to convince you of its power before long. Indeed the main purpose of this blog is to make you think by reading it and make me think by writing it. I am not going to wax lyrical about the power of rational thinking in further posts but bear with me for this post, because it is this which is the foundation for all further posts. Now let’s start off with what is thinking. The trusty old dictionary tells us that the act of giving consideration to something in our minds is thinking. What does science tell us? The process of thinking is the result of electrical impulses traveling in our brains. I have a slightly different definition. The process of amalgamating our interpretation of new experiences with our interpretation of old ones is thinking. Our interpretation is a phrase which I think is really important here. I will come back to that later. Now, thinking acquires a much deeper meaning. Each experience gives rise to thoughts in our mind, and the sum of all our thoughts (past and present) forms our personality and character. So you can consider this analogy. Experiences are the raw material for the bricks which will form our personality. The effect which these experiences have on our minds, that is our interpretation of these, turns them into bricks, and thinking is the mortar that binds the structure together. The stronger the bonds, the stronger will be the structure. Think about the implications. Coming back to interpretation, we always see everything through tinted lenses, lenses which are tinted with our preconceived conclusions. It is here that the power of rational thinking is revealed. Rational thinking can help us in making these as transparent as possible, so we see things as they are, not how we think they are, and most importantly, not how people tell us they are. It’s a simple tool whose most crucial use can be in preventing misunderstandings. Think of this. How many times have you become angry with a person because of something the person said? Did that person really mean it? Was your interpretation of the person’s words wrong? Standing in another person’s shoes is the most important part of rational thinking. It opens up whole new perspectives in your life. This is at a small scale. Expand this to nations and you see how far we can go. It is precisely this lack of rational thinking which leads to hatred and lack of trust. It divides the world into camps of us and them. Stop wars, stop this useless arms race, remove this atmosphere of suspicion, cynicism and distrust and channel the immense might of nations into constructive work. The world will be transformed. But now I digress from the topic and this tells me I should probably stop writing. I urge readers to write their comments and discuss this. I am open to any criticism as well, so please feel free to include that in your comments as well. PS-Some of you might be wondering why I haven’t touched upon the links between religion, superstition and rational thinking. That’s because they would form much longer posts by themselves and I feel that I cannot do full justice to those topics by writing a small paragraph about them.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 09:52:43 +0000
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