Hebrew4Christians Blog

A great many people think they are thinking
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

- William James

 

Here is something I recently read from the excellent book, Nonsense, by Robert J. Gula (Axios Press, 2007; ISBN: 978-09753662-6-4).

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Are men and women by nature hopelessly muddled creatures? Muddled, yes. Hopelessly, no. Men and women may be rational animals, but they are not by nature reasoning animals. Careful and clear thinking requires a certain rigor; it is a skill, and like all skills, it requires training, practice, and vigilance….

First… some characterizations of the ways people tend to respond think and think. For example:

1. People tend to believe what they want to believe.




2. People tend to project their own biases or experiences upon situations.




3. People tend to generalize from a specific event.




4. People tend to get personally involved in the analysis of an issue and tend to let their feelings overcome a sense of objectivity.




5. People are not good listeners. They tend to hear selectively. They often hear only what they want to hear.




6. People are eager to rationalize.




7. People are often unable to distinguish what is relevant from what is irrelevant.




8. People are easily diverted from the specific issue at hand.




9. People are usually unwilling to explore thoroughly the ramifications of a topic; they tend to oversimplify.




10. People often judge from appearances. They observe something, misinterpret what they observe, and make terrible errors in judgment.




11. People often simply do not know what they are talking about, especially in matters of general discussion. They rarely think carefully before they speak, but they allow their feelings, prejudices, biases, likes, dislikes, hopes, and frustrations to supersede careful thinking.




12. People rarely act according to a set of consistent standards. Rarely do they examine the evidence and then form a conclusion. Rather, they tend to do whatever they want to do and to believe whatever they want to believe and then find whatever evidence will support their actions or their beliefs. They often think selectively: in evaluating a situation they are eager to find reasons to support what they want to support and they are just as eager to ignore or disregard reasons that don’t support what they want.




13. People often do not say what they mean and often do not mean what they say.

To these principles, let’s add four observations cited by J.A.C.Brown in his Techniques of Persuasion:

Most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, want to have their prejudices confirmed, want to feel that they “belong” with the implication that others do not, and need to pinpoint an enemy to blame for their frustrations.

The above comments may seem jaundiced. They are not meant to be. They are not even meant to be critical or judgmental. They merely suggest that it is a natural human tendency to be subjective rather than objective and that the untrained mind will usually take the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is rarely through reason.