Uni-dimensional Thinking
Is it just me or is it true that critical thinking is more rare today than in the past?
Single Issue Voters Reveal Poor Critical Thinking Skills
There are usually many factors to consider when humans make choices, especially complex ones with far-reaching implications. I have often wondered why most people that I encounter will express a single perspective on topics that clearly require more nuanced and multi-variate consideration. Is debate a dying practice in this age of tweets?
Bucket Of Consciousness and Life Lens
I think of every human being as a bucket of consciousness interfaced by a life lens through which to view, consider and evaluate life experiences in each moment. The bucket analogy helps to picture how artifacts of consciousness are collected and aggregated through a lifetime of experiences. Those artifacts are the remnants of every thought, feeling and life lesson that each person has known.
Not new.
These ideas are not exactly new, but represent my own version of the Akashic records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records. and their usefulness in our lives.
“In the religion of theosophy and the philosophical school called anthroposophy, the Akashic records are a compendium of all universal events, thoughts, words, emotions and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present, or future in terms of all entities and life forms, not just human”.
With this concept in mind, consider all of the sources that infuse the consciousness of modern humans. Each of the 8+ billion people on earth “swims in an ocean” of stimuli from a myriad of sources, some attended to voluntarily, others by happenstance and necessity. These stimuli fill up the “bucket of consciousness” constantly, sometimes to overflowing levels.
Practical implications.
The “world view” of each person is heavily influenced by the nature of the contents that fall into that bucket. For example, a friend of mine who is a retired physician has relied solely on the Centre For Disease Control (CDC) and Health Canada for her understanding of the COVID19 disease and the “safe and effective” message concerning the vaccines. She has considered all other sources to be purveyors of conspiracy theory and dismissed them immediately. Her life lens and, consequently, her expressed opinions were shaped accordingly.
Another example. Former professor and ex-Marxist, Michael Rectenwald (pictured) was banished from the faculty of New York University when he began to question his past faith in socialism. Today, Dr. Rectenwald is a regular guest on the Libertarian podcast The Tom Woods Show. Listen here to Episode 2169 The Great Reset and Woke Capitalism, with Michael Rectenwald. http://tomwoods.com/ep-2169-the-great-reset-and-woke-capitalism-with-michael-rectenwald/. Clearly, the contents of Micheal’s earlier bucket of consciousness have been flushed of his former pro-Marxist artifacts and supplanted with those more Libertarian contents. Michael’s former ideas are not lost. They now serve to validate his updated bucket contents with a deep and more nuanced understanding from a broader range of perspectives.
Influences on Your Bucket of Consciousness are Ubiquitous.
The pejorative term “thought police” exists because people have come to understand the extent to which our thoughts and feelings are influenced by powerful people and institutions who have invested heavily in every type of “Digital megaphone” known to mankind.
Propaganda reaches us all whether we realize it or not. We are all subjected to “approved” narratives propagated by captured media corporations and other institutional actors. Censorship is the act of preventing “unapproved” narratives from reaching the public. The results are insidious and confidence-destroying. A friend seems to anxiously express every thought that comes to her mind and 90+% are subjects of worry or confusion.
A fellow golfer responded in terror last year on the third fairway of a golf game when I casually commented that I was unvaccinated. He shouted “your decision could kill me!” and he promptly put on his mask even though we were outside on a sunny, breezy day.
Women, however, have seemed to be more mask-compliant and unquestioning believers in the vaccines than men. I often wondered if social pressures dominated their buckets of consciousness. Did the fear of social isolation from the “tribe” for holding unpopular views and/or asking too many questions; did this fear form the basis of their readiness to comply to all pandemic “public health measures”?
A Question of Survival
My Life Lens differs from everyone else’s. The Artifacts of Consciousness than have influenced my life decisions and choices are as unique to me as yours are to you. As such, our survival choices will be very different in every sphere of our lives - physical, psychological, social and metaphysical (aka spiritual).
This individual uniqueness is the strongest justification for Freedom Of Choice for every human being to the greatest possible extent. The corollary of individualism is collectivism - the idea that every person must be subject to one-size-fits-all state legislation. These rules belies the collectivist ethic that underpins all government mandates: it values “the greater good” and/or “society’s benefit” over the welfare of the individual.
The last time I looked, society is a collection of individuals. How did we lose sight of this very simple fact?
