In one of his more recent columns\u2014\u201cIs Thinking Obsolete?\u201d\u2014Thomas Sowell takes note of the intellectual laziness that appears to have consumed our culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is always amazing,\u201d he writes, \u201chow many serious issues are not discussed seriously, but instead simply generate assertions and counter-assertions.\u201d\u00a0 Sowell identifies \u201ctelevision talk shows,\u201d where \u201cpeople on opposite sides often just try to shout each other down\u201d as a particularly salient illustration of this troubling phenomenon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a remarkable range of ways of seeming to argue without actually producing any coherent argument,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n
In part, the inability to think critically and honestly is the legacy of \u201cdecades of dumbed-down education.\u201d\u00a0 Yet there is more to it than this.\u00a0 Sowell states: \u201cEducation is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.\u201d He laments that \u201ca student can go all the way from elementary school to a Ph.D. without encountering any fundamentally different vision of the world from that of the prevailing political correctness.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s even worse is that \u201cthe moral perspective\u201d that accompanies \u201cthis prevailing ideological view is all too often that of people who see themselves as being on the side of the angels against the forces of evil\u201d\u2014irrespective of the issue in question.<\/p>\n
Of course, Sowell is correct about all of this. Yet matters are actually worse than what he says, for with the death of thinking goes the death of virtue.<\/p>\n
The good thinker must possess the virtue of analytical rigor, it is true.\u00a0 But this isn\u2019t the only virtue that comes with good thinking.<\/p>\n
For millennia, the story of Socrates\u2019 fate has served as a constant reminder that the enterprise of thinking, real thinking, is an inherently subversive activity.\u00a0 It is radical, for there is no idea that is immunized against it, no idea that the committed thinker will not interrogate.\u00a0 Obviously, then, thinking is a threatening engagement\u2014for both the thinker as well as those to whom he turns his attention.<\/p>\n
Thus, thinking both requires and cultivates the excellence of courage.\u00a0 It is a manly art that fortifies its practitioners even as they risk being alienated from \u201cthe respectable crowd\u201d\u2014i.e. the self-appointed guardians of the prevailing orthodoxy.<\/p>\n
However, it isn\u2019t just ostracism that is the cost of good thinking. The good thinker also risks his own self-image, for clear thinking demands self-denial, the denial of those of the thinker\u2019s own emotions, passions, and desires that conflict with his pursuit of truth.\u00a0 Self-denial is self-discipline, or moderation\u2014traditionally, a cardinal virtue.\u00a0 Yet this, in turn, also gives rise to honesty or veracity.<\/p>\n
Yet there are still other crowning achievements that come with good thinking.<\/p>\n
Whatever else may be said of them, while trying \u201cto shout each other down,\u201d those television talk show personalities to whom Sowell alludes most definitely cannot <\/i>be said to possess humility.\u00a0 But humility is necessary for clear thinking, for it enables us to recognize the very real possibility that our preconceptions, and even our convictions, just might be wrong.\u00a0 Without this acknowledgment, the thinker reduces himself to nothing more or less than a mere apologist for his own prejudices.<\/p>\n
Humility, in turn, is indispensable if wisdom is to be had.\u00a0 When the Oracle informed Socrates that he was the wisest of human beings, he was incredulous.\u00a0 On the one hand, he knew that the gods cannot lie.\u00a0 On the other, he was also painfully aware of his own ignorance.\u00a0 After a time, he discovered that the gods were right: he was the wisest of men, but precisely because he knew that he knew nothing. <\/i><\/p>\n
Finally, good, sober thinking breeds a sense of justice or good will.\u00a0 The good thinker grants a fair hearing to all ideas\u2014including, especially, those of his opponents.<\/p>\n
Courage, honesty, moderation, wisdom, humility, justice\u2014for thousands of years, Western civilization has prized these character traits.\u00a0 Our ancestors also realized that these excellences are inseparable from that of good thinking.<\/p>\n
If, as Sowell suggests, thinking is obsolete, then virtue is imperiled as well. \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In one of his more recent columns\u2014\u201cIs Thinking Obsolete?\u201d\u2014Thomas Sowell takes note of the intellectual laziness that appears to have consumed our culture. \u201cIt is always amazing,\u201d he writes, \u201chow many serious issues are not discussed seriously, but instead simply generate assertions and counter-assertions.\u201d\u00a0 Sowell identifies \u201ctelevision talk shows,\u201d where \u201cpeople on opposite sides often…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n