THINKRIGHT 2: MUST YOU THINK?

No, of course, you need not ..  Look around.  But your life requires thinking, either yours or someone else's.  It will not continue automatically.  Except for a few biological functions (heart beating, breathing), decisions must be made, action (which is the physicalization of thought) must be taken.  At the minimum. food must be acquired and consumed, shelter must be obtained, medical treatment may be required for survival.   If you choose not to do the required thinking, it must be done for you.  That is a fact of life.

Choosing not to think when you are capable of doing so places your life under the direction of, and at the mercy of, someone else, with all the risks that entails. (In the most extreme and vivid case, it was the decision by thousands of German soldiers to have Adolf Hitler do their thinking for them that allowed the holocaust to happen).  But the greatest damage of the choice not to think is not in the overtly bad things that may happen, but in the good things that won't happen:  the loss of the self confidence and self esteem that comes from successful personal thinking...and the consequent difficulty in acquiring and enjoying a happy life.

Why then do so many choose so often not to think for themselves, with such a large, potential downside?  For many reasons, I guess, but perhaps mostly because of the fear of responsibility for making wrong, improper or less than the best of decisions,  The deflation  of one's balloon.  Nonthinking also seems to save you time, and perhaps it does so, in the short run,  In the long run, it costs you time and just about everything else of value.

Interesting to note that society promotes non-thinking by offering acceptance to those who do what is expected of them, those who "follow the rules", adhere to protocols, proprieties and the "should do's" and "must do's"....and sentences those who do not to unfavored status and expulsion.  I suppose it is not surprising that society's public education stem omits this whole subject.

And that is something to think about.

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