The Death of Thought

Al Moscowitz observes:

The biggest problem in this world today is that people have lost the ability to think for themselves. I'm not sure if this is more prevalent in any particular demographic, whether that be ethnicity, age-group, culture, etc. It seems to be both pervasive and ubiquitous.

Whenever I gather information, analyze it, put together hypotheses and/or conclusions, almost EVERY time at least one person will insist that I "cite my sources" - usually that request comes with "include a link..."

Well guess what - THERE IS NO SOURCE AND THERE IS NO LINK - this is MY work - these are MY opinions - this is MY analysis.

Does ANYONE think on their own anymore - or have we become a planet full of regurgitators?

You know, if for no other reason, the world should celebrate people who put forth original ideas. Without us, pretty soon the regurgitators won't have anything to regurgitate.

Tim adds:

Yeah; people can't think anymore. They are trained up from childhood for technical skills - working with gadgets and doing specific jobs. Schools no longer teach HOW to think. They give enough information for a person to be able to be "productive citizens" aka worker drones. They are taught values, but not traditional values. Rather they are taught the post-modern values that make them meek and compliant citizens. The original purpose of education was to give you a knowledge base and to teach you how to think so you could work things out on your own. Not anymore. Almost all reasoning now is the employment of the logical fallacy Argumentum ad Authoritatum (argument from authority). If some "expert" says it is so (and we often cannot qualify who is expert but cite is as a matter of faith) then it must be so. This is the hallmark of a schlerotic society, one that has become decadent. And we see that - in the arts which have become entirely derivative, in our increasingly despotic and corrupt governments, in the failure of religion and philosophy. Things like the BLM rioting are a symptom of a moral and spiritual emptiness that stems in no small part from the inability of people to think and reason on their own (and that inability also stems from the decline in spiritual and moral standards.) Any way you slice it you are right to a large degree Al. We no longer have thinking but rather emoting with a few facts thrown in to justify a prejudice that is held.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:16 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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