What a fearful thought — if this situation is general: a nation of people, the vast majority of whom do no thinking for themselves in the area of political economy! FULL ARTICLE by Leonard Read
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/12154/thinking-for-oneself/
Thinking for Oneself
Previous post: The Gold Standard
Next post: Watch the ASC
{ 19 comments }
I don’t know. I think people do think for themselves. They just lack the knowledge and reasoning ability to arrive at the truth. John Nye at the American Interest has an interesting article related to this at
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=645. Here is an excerpt:
“The idea of impersonal social trust was the most dramatic accomplishment of industrial civilization’s rise from the 18th to the early 20th century. The greatest achievement of early modern economic growth was not the Industrial Revolution itself, but the way in which the leading Western economies began to move away from highly parochial, narrow networks of personal exchange and came to rest instead on increasingly complex national and international commercial networks of impersonal exchange. The networks were mediated by competition, but also by an Adam Smithian understanding that strangers’ seeking their own gain amongst each other could lead to universal benefit. Praxis and theory reinforced each other.”
As Hayek wrote, when people think for themselves they view everything in familial and tribal contexts. Everything is personal. That’s all they understand. Then they apply that thinking to national and international contexts. Nye agrees with Douglass North that one of the great achievements of capitalism was the switch from personal relations in business to impersonal. That increased the size of markets, reduced transaction costs and increased efficiency. And as Mises pointed out, capitalism is mass production, or production for the masses, which requires the development of impersonal exchange.
A great deal of criticism of capitalism has to do with the impersonal nature of it. Opponents long for the old village in which everyone knew personally everyone else including everyone they did business with. That is simply not possible in capitalism. But if people think for themselves without knowledge of economics, they will fall back on their trust of the personal and distrust of the impersonal.
I doubt that many people can theorize, but can only consider the views of those who can. (This is akin to those of us who can only learn of subjects such as in science, where we could not derive the theorems by our own capabilities.) However, people are able to analyze their own experiences, apply common sense, and render moral decisions. This would suffice for rejecting the liberal (& statist) premises that replace personal responsibility by altruism.
Allen,
It is my opinion that you may be confusing that which “is” with that which “must be”.
Deriving a new theorem may require orders of magnitude more effort than is needed to evaluate, understand and subsequently either accept or reject an existing theorem. Consequently, many people choose not to make that effort. This does not imply that they are incapable of doing so, just that they have decided not do so.
It is also my opinion that people everywhere make the best decisions, given their current understanding and the currently available (to them) information. It makes no sense to summarily “write off” people as being somehow “inferior” because they refuse to agree with this (or that) idea.
I’d rather think that if any fault exists regarding a person’s failure to accept the concept proffered, it lies in the failure of the guide to adequately explain, not in the inability of the seeker to think and understand.
This leads to greater expenditure of effort on the part of the guide, and perhaps to greater acceptance on the part of the seeker. If the guide is, however, met with near universal non-acceptance, perhaps it is the guide who should become the seeker.
Don
I think ignorance that remains unaddressed belies a lack of thinking. The thinking person will seek to expand his or her boundaries of knowledge over time and become an even better thinker. Seemingly, this is the point of education.
Intellectual group thinkers are common on this blog site. Intellectuals are mostly shallow and faddish with their disposition to group think. The thinker is usually one person and his/her idea(s) is echoed onward by foot soldiers. Thinking for oneself is discouraged from birth to death.
How to think is more important than what you know.
I try to do my own thinking as much as I can. However, often it is a luxury. I liked the article.
Would someone please tell me whether or not I liked this article?
You were ambivalent about it.
I think this lack of critical thinking and blind acceptance of the political rhetoric of our “leadership” stems from the education that we receive at a young age. I found that in my experience in the public school system, I was never rewarded for critical thinking. Outside of mathmatics, public school education simply fed me knowledge. For example, we never learned to understand why the American Revolution started, but rather that it did, who was involved and when it all occurred. My exams consisted of simple memorization. If you could remember the dates and key figures, you probably received an “A” on your exam.
Sadly, my experience at the university level was the same. I received a bachelors degree in business and left college with little understanding of business, finance, economics or the other key business subjects. My understanding of economics was simply that supply and demand are the key principles of economics. I was never required to understand everything behind the seemingly simple idea of supply and demand.
It was not until law school that I was faced with an environment where I was not allowed to simply accept something as true. Even when I was called upon and gave a correct answer, the professors would push and question you so that they were sure that I knew “why” my answer was correct. It was in this environment that I truly began to think for myself, pretty much for the first time.
Let me also be clear, that I do not consider myself to have been stupid or even misinformed before this experience with the socratic method. I was a “smart” person. I was educated, I had good grades, and I believe that I was a fairly consciencious citizen. But the fact remained that I did not have nearly as a good a grasp on my beliefs that I do now.
Long story short…I think we need to introduce the socratic method into our schools at a very young age. Teach people to question ideas and to truly understand their beliefs and policy standpoints. Knowledge is only halfway to enlightment. Knowledge must be accomanied by understanding.
Donald Rowe notes that “Deriving a new theorem may require orders of magnitude more effort than is needed to evaluate, understand and subsequently either accept or reject an existing theorem.” I concur, and have been speaking of the latter, for I submit that *few are capable of evaluating or understanding an issue on its merits*. I rarely find those who can state what is at issue, or how it could in principle be resolved. As to the cause of this limitation, it is that people generally examine an ideological issue by pursuing an objective (instead of ascertaining its veracity), which is rationalizing rather than reasoning. Allow a few examples.
In 1980, when our national debt was one trillion dollars, I recommended default on the debt, perhaps paying 90 cents on the dollar. This would have precluded the massive fix of today, since America would no longer have been able to borrow. How many people do you think were able to address that recommendation on its merits? I am not talking about agreeing with it, but merely weighing the pros and cons. For that matter, how many people today can adequately discuss whether it should have been done then?
Similarly, how many people were able to differentiate between whether global warmists were engaged in science or advocacy? Next, consider that when people hear that there are 70 deaths daily due to lack of health insurance, how many can differentiate between actual deaths due to denial of treatment, and a theoretical model attributing the disparity in death rates to those with or without health insurance (as though this necessitated causality)? Not long ago I spoke to a group of a few dozen seniors, maintaining that when the 2nd amendment states that ‘…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged’ presupposes that people had to have that right or it could not in theory be abridged. The unanimous response was that absent a Militia there was no right in the first place. (It was as though one said there could be an offspring without presupposing a parent.) Then, more recently, I asked for the source of the right to redistribute wealth, since an individual had no right to steal from another. The response was that the right came from majority vote. To which I said “Fine, then if the majority votes against it, there is no right, and if the majority votes to have slaves there is that right.” How many people do you think responded to this on its merits, or provided a source for the right to redistribute wealth? So I ask Donald to present his cases which demonstrate either how the average person examines issues on their merit, or show why in principle they have that capability.
My original claim was that few people can theorize (although they can analyze their own experiences, apply common sense, and render moral decisions). Then I gave examples of that disability. However, I left out what should be apparent to readers of the von Mises blog, namely the failure of the public to recognize the obvious, viz., hampering the market does not bring prosperity; borrowing & spending does bring solvency; subsidizing failure does not reduce it.
Allen,
I beg your pardon if my comment caused you any distress, as that was not my intent. Please consider my comment an expression of my own distress. I do not dispute the accuracy of your observations, I too can see the same lack of effective thinking on a daily basis. My distress lies mainly in the conclusions that may be drawn from those observations . A conclusion which, in my mind at least, also demonstrates a similar inadequate thinking is one that holds that somehow there is an intrinsic deficiency in the brains of those who are not “deep thinkers”. And that is somehow the cause of their lack of thinking skills.
The cause may be intrinsic, or it may be extrinsic, or some combination of both. That is a separate question. It may not be possible to determine this in general, and it is certainly not practical on a case by case basis.
If it is intrinsic, there is little that can be done to improve the situation until the invention of the “smart pill”. All efforts to teach, demonstrate, or reward greater thinking will fail, so there is no benefit to be had by any such effort.
That situation, however, is not what I observe on an almost daily basis. For over 35 years I have interacted with several people daily, individually. I do not decide for them, rather I present and clarify options for them to consider and for them to choose what action will be taken. The people I deal with come with various levels of ability and experience. They are motivated to make the best decision they can and nearly all respond eagerly to any help I can provide to assist their decision making, i.e. their thinking processes.
I readily admit that it is my experiential bias that informs my belief. I believe that it is possible for anyone, at any level of thinking ability, to improve the depth and quality of their current thinking ability. (And that includes myself!)
I hope this clarifies the idea that I was inadequately able to express in my previous post.
Don
Dear Don:
I appreciate your considerate attitude, but your comment did not cause any distress. Rather my concern is with its intellectual content. We agree that there is a “lack of effective thinking” but disagree as to why it occurs, and how to deal with it. Were we doctors, it would be said that we have different diagnoses and treatments.
I do not hold that “there is an intrinsic deficiency in the brains of those who are not “deep thinkers”. And that is somehow the cause of their lack of thinking skills.” Rather I wrote “As to the cause of this limitation, it is that people generally examine an ideological issue by pursuing an objective (instead of ascertaining its veracity), which is rationalizing rather than reasoning.” So whereas you are refuting a biological premise, it is not one that I hold. On the contrary, I submit that all men are biologically capable of reasoning (rather than rationalizing), but are guided by a paradigm that prefers advocacy to truth-seeking. I concur with your view that ‘anyone, at any level of thinking ability, [can] improve the depth and quality of [his] current thinking ability.’ However, I do not think that this is at issue with regard to influencing the public regarding ideological, social, political, or military theories. Again, I contend that “that few people can theorize (although they can analyze their own experiences, apply common sense, and render moral decisions).
In sum, *you effectively expressed your view, but it presumed that I held beliefs which I reject*. Perhaps you would agree that to better engage in a discussion, people should first define the issue, and state the difference in their positions. I presumed that the issue was how to influence the ideological outlook of the public. Your position was that this can be done by enhancing the ability of the mass to theorize, while mine was that this was infeasible (although they can analyze their own experiences, apply common sense, and render moral decisions). Do you agree that this is where we part company?
Allen
Dear Allen,
Thank you for your response and for the civility it contained.
The article by Leonard Reed both observed and lamented the lack of thinking skills on the part of the “general public”, but nowhere in the article did I get the impression that he was of the opinion that the (then) current conditions were either permanent or hopeless.
My response to your first post was triggered by the words the first sentence contained, perhaps a little too automatically, like a dog scratches his fleas. Now, I did not know you, or really anything about you. And I certainly did not make any judgement of “you as a person”, but only that sentence, which I quote below.
Allen Weingarten March 11, 2010 at 10:17 am
“I doubt that many people can theorize, but can only consider the views of those who can.”
Had the three “can” words been instead “do”, I would never have made your acquaintance, which I now would consider to be my loss.
Allen Weingarten March 14, 2010 at 5:02 am
“In sum, *you effectively expressed your view, but it presumed that I held beliefs which I reject*.”
I hope that I have explained how I arrived at my erroneous conclusion.
Allen Weingarten March 14, 2010 at 5:02 am
“Do you agree that this is where we part company?”
I confess, I do not know how to interpret that question.
The “part company” leads me to infer that you no longer wish to engage. If that is the case, I respect your choice. I will accept the end of our civil discourse, with some measure of disappointment. I am also, yet again, disappointed at my inability to persuade.
Don
Dear Don:
Leonard Read is a favorite of mine, and as you say was not of the view that “conditions were either permanent or hopeless.” I am similarly pleased to have made your acquaintance, and would appreciate your email address (mine is allen7777@comcast.net). I do wish to further engage, but doubt that this thread on the blog is appropriate. What I meant by “where we part company” is ‘wherein is our disagreement’. I agree upon the importance of furthering sound reasoning, and that all of us have much to learn. We do disagree as to: whether most people have the ability to examine theories on their merit; what is the cause of their failure to do so; and consequently, how to deal with the mass with regard to theoretical matters. On this last point for example, I presume that you would deal with the public on the basis of what Mises wrote in “Human Action” while I would confine my efforts to a most simplified view, and to the immorality of current economic policy.
Thank you for your thoughts,
Allen
I am reminded of an exchange recorded in the Bible, Luke chapter 12. A man told Jesus “teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!” Jesus answered “Man, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you?”
Jesus goes on to say “be on your guard against every form of greed.”
When Jesus finally asks “And why do you not even on your own initiative what is right?”, this is a rhetorical question. The appeal to authority was in this case an attempt to enlist the authority to help extract money from someone else. This is overwhelmingly the motivation for our present government at every level.
The problem is not with thinking, but with morality. It has been said that a person’s morality dictates his philosophy. This is because the driving force is morality, in this case covetousness, and the intellect is simply engaged to produce the proper rationalizations. The man who is voting to take his neighbor’s money is thinking for himself at this level. He literally cannot understand any arguments against this practice without a change in his morals.
I concur with Guard that “The problem is not with thinking, but with morality.” A course in logic or in history will not offset man’s rationalizations. Rather what is called for is raising the moral issue.
I didn’t like this article.
You seem to think that because people have not come to the same conclusion as you, that they do not think! Ironic that the other group of people who think like this are the ones who have the opposite ideals to yourself – socialists!
Have you ever thought that people have thought about politics and economics enough to realise that while there is a better way to do things in theory, the end result will be very similar to what they already have, so why change it? We only have one life, so why waste it in doing something which will only be changed by fashion / people with a very fixed view of what is correct etc within a short period of time anyway?
Comments on this entry are closed.