While reading the GOS today, something made my brain come up with this, which is either brilliantly original or a cliché I heard once:
If you don't think for yourself, somebody else will do it for you.
I Googled it but got no exact matches. Still, it would probably make a nice T-shirt or bumper sticker or sig line, but I suspect many people would fail to grasp its full meaning.
I'll explain below the double gnocchi, but if you'd like to skip that and go straight to the Good Stuff™, that's OK too. But first, a word from our sponsor:
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Think for yourself! is a frequent admonition that I throw at my students. I want them to think critically and check facts. I want them making reality-based decisions. But the truth is we can't always think for ourselves in the complex world we live in. Even with computers and smart phones at our fingertips.
We are enormously interdependent when it comes to thinking. I depend on people like Paul Krugman to do some of my thinking for me when it comes to economics. I depend on Eugene Robinson for wisdom on national political issues. I depend on engineers and doctors and mechanics and lots of other folks to do my thinking for me regarding many matters.
The trick is, of course, to choose the right "somebody" to do your thinking for you about those things you have neither time, expertise, nor inclination to think about on your own. For me, I want information from rational, fact-based sources. Then, armed with that information, I can think for myself. I might even disagree with Krugman or Robinson occasionally.
In order to separate the wheat from the chaff of sources, however, I have to keep my mind and my eyes open. I have to know what's going on around me. It's this requirement that stymies many Americans. They aren't even looking at the most important issues around them, much less thinking about the reliability of their sources. Never mind the zombies who choose Fox News to do their thinking for them, what bothers me are the completely unaware who are vulnerable to manipulation by propaganda like we saw in the 2010 elections.
So we should certainly think for ourselves, but we must also be aware that, pragmatically, we allow others to think for us every day. I don't know about you, but I want to be as careful as I can about whose thinking I trust.
Image Credits:
The Thinker courtesy acus.org
Brain diagram courtesy brainharmonycenter.com
Reality poster courtesy aanblog.com
And here's the Good Stuff™:
TOP PHOTOS
September 13, 2013
Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!
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