Tag: thinking

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A New Way of Thinking

Recently I completed an on-line course on Environmental Law, and once again, I am blown away. I am trying to pursue subjects that I had zero or little interest in for various reasons and I highly recommend you try also.

I had no understanding of the legal process and held uninformed opinions and prejudices about laws, lawyers, etc. I thought legalese was gobbley gook that only those who could endure years of study were able to understand. That part is true, it is gobbley gook and it does take years to fully grasp it, but for a good reason. Laws have to be very precise and have universal meaning, that is, to enable identical interpretation the world over and be effective. This is what good lawyers and policy makers do, they look for weak areas, to exploit or remedy. And good institutions work hard to ensure they can enforce what they are assigned to do, in this case, to legally protect the environment. Judges ensure that all players in the game are following the rules to the letter.

But there is so much more to law than mumbo jumbo. This was a fascinating course for two reasons. First, an understanding of how laws work, the institutions developed to uphold laws, what judges really do, and how all this is applied to real world cases. And it examined some shocking environmental issues and abuses. Interesting enough. But the second, and greater value from this course was developing a new way of thinking.

When I left the administrative secretarial work force and became a medical secretary, it was as if I left earth and landed on Pluto. Everything was entirely different. They spoke a strange language. Office procedures were entirely foreign. Oh sure, you still operated a computer, typed and answered phones, but this was a whole new and much higher level of being, doing and thinking. When you first work in the medical field, your head goes tilt-tilt-tilt.

And this is what this course did for me. It took me to a whole new way of thinking. I had to not only change gears, but change vehicles.

So if you really want to expand your present awareness, to learn how to understand, analyze and interpret the world around you, take a course, read a book, sign up for an experience.

It not only adds to your knowledge, but it’ll shake up your opinions and beliefs. It’ll expand your world view. When it comes to what you think you know about life, the universe and everything, you might just find you had it all wrong.

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Muddled

We have become a nation of muddled thinkers.

There is too much information coming at us 24/7, non stop, thanks to instantly accessible devices such as our phones.

So we bring a lot of unrelated things together and think it makes sense. We also hail conspiracy theories and super heroes because they are in movies, which we think are real. Paranoia runs rampant thanks to crazy people posting crazy ideas that literally thousands of people read. There are doctored photographs and fake documents. We have a great deal of difficulty sorting it all out.

Our education system failed us. Never taught us how to think logically, to solve problems. It taught us how to memorize and passed that off as proving we are smart. We cannot discern fact from fiction, we have not learned how to read a person or a book. We have not learned how to separate emotion from logic. We cannot reason. It is a skill that is lost.

There are people who think eggs, milk and cheese come from plants. There are people who still believe the world is flat. That pollution doesn’t exist. That Trump never lies (really!!).

Part of the problem is we are emotional creatures. We respond to feelings. This is left over from our very primitive beginnings before we had language or the written word. We communicated with emotions. We are also visual beings, an image can have a lasting impact on us. Combine visual with emotion and you have people blindly led to slaughter. It once saved us from predators, now it feeds us to them.

So we are greatly influenced by advertisements and cleverly created videos, and people who can speak with passion.

If you speak with passion you can win the hearts of many. Just look at Trump. He can’t even say most of the words, and if you read the transcripts, it doesn’t even make sense. Yet people buy the insanity because there is emotion behind it.

The other thing that muddles us is we are juveniles.

Yes, many are still children, wanting to be rescued and taken care of by Daddy. Without an adult brain, people do not know how to survive on their own. We are not resilient. We are wimps, whining about the most stupidest of things, to going outright ballistic about inconsequential meaningless events. We expect others to do things for us. We are babies. Some of these babies endanger others, like demanding their employees go back into a burning building to rescue a painting (really, this just recently happened) and then fired them and condemned them on the internet. What the fuck are we thinking?

Once I attended a classical music pre-concert get together, where we got to meet the conductor and some of the musicians and hear some talks and ask some questions. The conductor related a story that a man threatened to kill him because he played Beethoven’s 5th symphony too slow! He actually had to be put under police protection for a while!

I have seen internet postings of people having meltdowns because they didn’t get ketchup with their fries. And of course, we have all seen Bridezillas wreaking havoc with virtually everyone in sight.

This is all very muddled, juvenile thinking, dangerous thinking. Which leads us to very muddled, juvenile, dangerous actions.

And look at where it is taking us.

Scary indeed.

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3 Books

This is a very dangerous time, and most people are oblivious.

There are 3 books you should read, and soon.

1984 by George Orwell. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Oh yeah, depressing books for Christmas reading, but our society is on the brink of becoming a mix of these futuristic scenarios. Democracy is on the verge of becoming a dictatorship.

Think not?

I think you’d better start paying attention to what is going on in the world, and at home. I mean, really paying attention – that is THINKING. Thinking means analyzing what you are hearing, reading and seeing. Too many are just parroting back what others tell them. Tsk. Tsk. You shall pay big for this. You will lose your freedom of movement, of speech, of being.

Check out people like John Oliver, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and their commentaries on the state of our leaders and world on youtube. You will laugh, you will cry, you might actually pay attention and think and see the truth and not be caught up in the flow of magic thinking.

You know how I feel about magic thinking, aka, New Age hocus pocus. An excellent book on how we got into this lame brain wishful thinking, and how it has resulted in Trump, is a book by Gary Lachman, Dark Star Rising.

You can never read enough. The people who need to read, do not, the people who need to be informed are not. People are walking around with what I call non-opinions. They don’t know why they think or feel like they do. They just say what someone else has told them. They accept everything at face value. This is the stuff of immature, juvenile minds, who cannot think and analyze for themselves. Time to grow up. Our leaders are imbeciles, dangerous juvenile delinquents. If we don’t smarten up ourselves, it will not matter any more. We will live under a dictatorship where we are told what to think and do – or die. These are harsh words at Christmas, but I am fed up with seeing people blinded by charismatic leaders who talk absolute gibberish bullshit. Leaders whose only goal is world dominance and to line their own pockets and establish an empire. This is dictatorship and it is ugly, savage and corrupt. It will destroy everything and everyone you know and love.

Dictators will sacrifice your life for themselves. They kill any perceived traitor, even their own families. Haven’t you already heard and seen veiled threats, the speeches that incite violence against fellow human beings, against creatures, against the environment, and ultimately, the world? Their finger is always on the trigger and they make others do their dirty work. How many people take the fall for their crimes? They rewrite history. They invent non existing things and scenarios. They proclaim their own brilliance. All for their own glory! They don’t give a rats ass about anyone else. They just want to look fabulous! They slander and smear everyone else, but even the tiniest criticism of them results in a huge revengeful backlash. Everyone is silenced. There is no truth or justice. They commit horrendous crimes and no one can question it. Dictators are not accountable to anyone or anything. They are above any and all laws.

Think this couldn’t happen here? It is happening!

How does this way compare to what you normally think of as being a democracy? What does freedom mean to you? To society?

Tune into the wise men of youtube and hear what they have to say.

I strongly suggest you watch John Oliver explain to you how dictators fool you with words; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZAPwfrtAFY You will learn about the 3 tricks; delegitimizing the media, whataboutism and trolling.

I hope watching this will encourage you to check out more. Yes, they say it like it is – with profanity at times, but we need these wake up calls.

Like Bill Maher on illiteracy https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=bill+maher+youtube#id=124&vid=6206a6f3adde32bd26ce5d7abb8d68fb&action=view

This is my plea to you, this Christmas and New Years. Make a New Years resolution to think. Make your own opinions. Check out the opinions and thoughts of others. Read. Watch. Research. Make informed decisions. All of our lives depend on it.