I believe some people just don't like to think deeply. It's not that they can't;

[raccoon]

that they don't have the IQ to do so, in most cases. It's that they just don't want to or don't choose to.
They think either/or, good/bad, etc. They don't see shades of gray (maybe just don't want to). They think there's a simple, pat solution to everything. You're poor? So just get a better job. :sarcasm:

I think this is true in any society, any century. The percentage of people who have this mindset may vary with the time and place. There seem to be a great many of them in the US now.

Why do so many people NOT think? Is it just laziness?

[dbonds]

1. I used to think all you had to do was wake the people, get them to start thinking....

But over time I have learned that the really can't. A lot of people just are not that smart. Some of these people are good at remembering items/lists/dates but they can't apply knowledge.

[raccoon]

4. I used to think that too, that once these people were informed, they'd

realize the Republicans and Neocons are not their friends, but now I realize that in the vast majority of cases, that's not going to happen. Until something happens that really bites them in the arse.

[lynnertic]

2. I think it's a matter of avoiding cognitive dissonance

If you don't think about how your selfish/wasteful society (and on a smaller scale, your personal actions) hurt others and the environment, you don't have to feel like you need to do something about it.

[Poll_Blind]

3. I have been spending too much time thinking about this specific issue.

  As far as I can reckon, it's a defense mechanism (based on the unsettling feeling felt when trying to evaluate complex situations- no easy answer) which set in at an early age and which hadn't been challenged as the person reached into adulthood. I know two folks like this and it gets them into all kinds of trouble. They ARE intelligent. But this mechanism is so much a part of their personality they have to be conscious all the time of its impact on their life or they fall prey to it.

  It is desperately sad to see this in action, in a close friend. It's like they're the victim of a mild neurological disorder. I'm not trying to absolve them of personal responsibility, just sharing what my conclusions have been.

PB

[elocs]

5. I believe that most people do not think deeply, but they may occasionally think deep thoughts.

Most, as Thoreau said, lead lives of quiet desperation. Most are just struggling to get through their day and to view things as black/white, right/wrong is simply a coping mechanism. Many just do not have the physical or mental energy or wherewithal to think deeply and I certainly would not judge them for that.

[OneGrassRoot]

6. Limbaugh et al play to these same people....

I wrote an open letter (which I copy and paste every time I get a smear email) at my blog in which I skewer the racism and bigotry, yet I also say, which is pertinent to your post here:


"Instead of arguing about whose tax plan or health care plan or foreign policy stance will be best for us -- or, better yet, having discussions on how to revamp our completely corrupt SYSTEM...to make the government once again work for We The People -- more time is spent on pure smears and lies based in racism and bigotry.

But dealing with complex issues such as our corrupt system is hard, especially when so many things need to be dealt with and are being discussed in an election year. That takes a lot of critical, independent thinking and reasoning. Not something most Americans are willing to engage in. We've been conditioned to not really care about an ISSUE and its complexities, but instead rail against, for example, the image of the "welfare queen" rather than get angry at the invisible corporations our tax dollars are now visibly going toward as part of the decades-old corporate welfare scheme to rape the taxpayer and sell off America.

An easy target, that's what most people need. So focusing on "he's a muslim terrorist/he's black!!!" is much easier. It's a black-and-white issue...pun intended. Much less effort has to go into that approach. Life is easier when it's like a game: we need a solid opponent, someone to be against, a clearcut enemy, a bogeyman. The right-wing aspect of the Republican Party is brilliant at producing that target and focusing attention on this, in order to divert attention away from issues."

[raccoon]

10. Great post.

"An easy target, that's what most people need. " Amen to that! True in any century, any society.

[vanlassie]

7. Agree- We all have minds that tend to want to protect us

at any cost- even if it means having us believe things that are very much not true.

Who among us didn't grow up with at least one of these typical core beliefs:

"I'm not good enough." or "I'm stupid." or "I'm not loveable."

It takes weeding though a lot of muck to get to what's true, and for many it's just too hard or too scary or, truthfully....they don't have a clue how to go about it.

[ColoradoMagician]

8. They would have to admit they were wrong.

and they can't.

Most of the time we have an opinion of something before we get the information. When we get the information we sometimes have to admit to ourselves that we had originally been wrong. I don't think 'they' can do that.

I found it interesting that when the Repubs were trying to sell the "She can see Russia from Alaska" line on the t.v. and the reporters would challenge the Repub on it. The response, "I was joking." The truth is, no talking head goes on these shows to be joking around. Guilliani did it as well as others.

This is why I have given up on all Repubs. They are not and have not been interested in really fixing the problems.

[shadowknows69]

9. General societal apathy

Used to have it myself. If things are on a reasonably even kiel in your life it's easy not to notice the shadows beneath the surface. The media gives no aid to that condition. People don't automatically think, like many of us, that they should dig deeper for their information. They've been conditioned to believe the talking heads who are paid to "inform" us. It's an ignorant trust that I'm almost envious of, but I was stupid enough to go to Journalism school where the news, and the relentless pursuit of the truth was my homework and Dogma so I never had the option to stay innocent. I don't blame people. It's not an easy thing to open people's eyes to some things that may cause everything they've believed in all their lives to unravel. I know it wasn't easy for me to come to the realization that we don't live in the America of my parents anymore.

[raccoon]

11. Well said. nt

[kick-ass-bob]

12. Some people do/cannot move past the concrete thinking

And into the abstract. As children, we all think concretely but as we grow up, some of us are able to move into abstract, while others do not.

Those who do not are often those who believe what is written to be the truth in a concrete way - what they said is exactly what they meant. Abstract thinking leads to questioning of the intent of the writing (or speech, or ideas), and a more openness to alternatives.

I believe the reasons as to why they do not has to do with the way they have been taught. So much of how we think comes from this. Different cultures are much more concrete than us, and that is because of how they have been "taught to think."

[sweetpotato]

15. My boss - an Education Professor - agrees with you

It has to do with where one falls on the reasoning scale.

Like the ethical questions - would you steal medicine to save your dying child, even though its against the law to steal?

Concrete thinkers don't get past the *its illegal to steal* and cannot see that breaking this law leads to a greater good - saving a life.

I'm not sure there is any way to advance someone's reasoning abilities.

These are the folks who like authoritarian government.

[kick-ass-bob]

16. They would have to understand why they would want reasoning

abilities to be advanced. If that can be done, then they can move into the abstract areas.

In my family, we teach our children to be critical thinkers, and they are developing those skills even at 12 and 7. If there lives a person in a family who does not encourage those traits, it will be much more difficult for them to develop them. Is this always perfect? No. Some have an innate drive or other sources to change from the way their surroundings tell them to be.

But that is much more rare and difficult than if the ability is fostered and nurtured.

You also don't see nearly as many going from abstract back to concrete - which is why I hold out hope for humans ;)

[EFerrari]

23. My grandmother was a highly educated person, a writer,

and she was isolated during the day with no one to talk to but me from the time I was about two. She used to read me her rough drafts and talk to me about global politics, lol, and let me take the weekly vocab quizzes that came in one of her magazines. I'm positive that changed my brain.

Imho, nuklar families are not the best arrangement for helping kid to develop critical skills.

[cobalt1999]

13. Part of it is that our culture doesn't allow people the undisturbed time to think deeply.

Many folks get up, turn on the TV or radio immediately, talk on the phone, text msgs in/out, prepare for work, drive to work with the cell phone, deal with multiple inputs during the days, and back in the car with music/cell phone back home, then TV, movies, computer games in the evening.

No matter what your IQ is, that's not an environment for thinking deeply.

To think deeply, you need some quiet contemplation, you need time to think through the relationships, you need a mechanism/group/person to bounce ideas off of and get feedback.

It's not that people are lazy per se, but they don't value setting up time to actually THINK.

[OneGrassRoot]

17. I call it white noise. Very few people are introspective enough to...

sit in silence and listen to what they have to say to themselves. Therefore, there's the constant external bombardment. Much easier.

Extraordinarily dangerous, IMHO.

[cobalt1999]

20. It is extraordinarily dangerous

It's also sad that people can't stand to be alone with their thoughts for any significant period of time.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Emotional factors take over

For example, I'm convinced that Obama's statement about working class people clinging to God and guns because they're fearful was right on, and that's why the Republicanites made such a big deal of it.

These days, anyone who is below corporate executive level knows that it wouldn't take much to put them out on the streets--maybe one missed paycheck, maybe three or four. Jobs are being cut right and left.

This is scary. But most people don't understand how Republican and Republican Lite economic policies have screwed them over, since the right-wing media have been channeling their anger and anxiety into hating scapegoats. Furthermore, questioning the economic system would mean questioning America(TM).

All of us grew up hearing "America is the greatest country in the world." It was easy to say in the 1950s, when Europe and East Asia were still trying to lift themselves out of the rubble and when most first-generation incomes still remembered being hardscrabble peasants in the Old Country. The lessons I had in school in the 1950s implied that life was hardly bearable in other countries and that EVERYBODY was clamoring to come here.

This belief in "America(TM) as Number One" an article of faith, stronger than any religion, among average Americans, so deeply ingrained in us that I didn't even think about it until one time about twenty-five years ago when I was in Canada and happened to hear someone on Canadian TV say, "This is one of the greatest countries in the world."

Whoa! What a difference in attitude. "The greatest" versus "one of the greatest."

The utter conviction of Middle America that the whole world envies it lies behind the vehement reaction to the Rev. Wright. Viewed objectively, Wright's sermons are as factually valid as and in the same tradition as the ancient prophets condemning the kings of Israel and Judah for their sins. Anyone who has actually read the Bible knows that the ancient Jewish prophets never hesitated to confront the rich and powerful or refer to their own countries in less than flattering terms.

But the religion of "America as Number One" is so strong that even a Christian minister following Biblical precedents is condemned by Middle America for blaspheming against the country. This unquestioning patriotism is one reason, I believe, that this is one reason that suburban megachurches, which flatter their congregations and tell them that they're "the real America," are so successful.

With this strenght of belief in the goodness of their country, Middle Americans find it hard to question the system. If, for example, they actually absorbed the fact that the U.S. now has less upward mobility than most of Europe, it would shatter their belief in the American Dream, and that's too scary to contemplate.

John McCain preaches the traditional religion of America as Number One and everyone who is opposed to America as Number as being evil.

It may take being knocked upside the head with an economic 2-by-4 for working class right-wingers to completely lose their faith in the system. In the meantime, they use hatred of immigrants and the poor as a kind of magical thinking, as if they're thinking, "Maybe if I hate the poor enough I won't end up like them."

[raccoon]

19. That's what I absorbed in school too.

" The lessons I had in school in the 1950s implied that life was hardly bearable in other countries and that EVERYBODY was clamoring to come here."


"This belief in "America(TM) as Number One" an article of faith, stronger than any religion, among average Americans, so deeply ingrained in us "

That belief is almost like a religion.

[Beacool]

18. What's not thinking? Not agreeing with our politics?

There are plenty of brilliant people on both sides of the political spectrum, as there are plenty of dolts too.

This is similar to the argument of some conservatives who think that all liberals are morons. It's a fallacy either way.

[raccoon]

21. IME right-wingers I've met in RL and many times, who post on the Internet,

don't think. Those whom it would seem would be smart enough to know better think if you're unable to find a "good" job it's your own fault, you didn't try hard enough, etc. If bad things happened to you, it's the result of your own sorriness, laziness, bad choices, etc. (That may be true some of the time, but certainly not all of the time.)

They are very un-compassionate.

[Beacool]

22. I'm more tolerant.

Both extremes scare me, including those on the extreme left. I see them as very narrow minded and intolerant of other people's point of view.

There is a fundamental difference in how both sides view the function of government, but neither side is lacking in intelligence. Conservatives think that everyone should pull themselves by their bootstraps. They forget that some may need a little help, in a country as rich as ours it's immoral to have so much poverty.

[raccoon]

25. That sounds self-righteous.

"I'm more tolerant."


" but neither side is lacking in intelligence." That hasn't been my experience. Many right-wingers think if Rush Limpballs said something, it's true. If Rush Limpballs equates someone's disagreement with how the Iraq War is conducted with criticizing the soldiers, they swallow it.

[Beacool]

26. I didn't mean as opposed to you.

I meant it in general terms. I'm more tolerant than some other people I know who think that all conservatives are evil incarnate. I'm more live and let live.

[EFerrari]

24. That's not really true. The arts, literature, the professoriate

are all fields dominated by liberals. I'm not sure about science. But, it's not true that there is some kind of even split among intellectuals. They tend to be liberals

By it's very on ideology, modern "conservatism" is anti-intellectual. And it shows. That's why they have to scream and interrupt on the cable talk shows, because they don't reason very well and their grasp of facts in their field is usually slim.

[Greyhound]

27. Leaving aside those that are truly incapable of extrapolating, I think it comes down

to the conclusions one reaches when one seriously contemplates a given problem being just too big and too scary.

Our economic model for example; Once a person learns how our system of currency has been hijacked and understands the model as a whole, it becomes clear that it is fundamentally flawed and will always result in a cycle collapse and rebuilding, each time making the owners of the system more powerful. A repeating Ponzi scheme that eventually leaves everyone else permanently indebted to the parasites.

So everything we thought we knew turns out to be wrong. How can this be fixed and what would the consequences of that potential solution be? It becomes very frightening as more and more implications are derived as each solution is considered. What models currently exist? Can we envision an entirely new model? How can it be implemented? What about all of the social disruption? Who will be hurt and how much and is that right? What have we not considered, what are we missing? What if it goes sideways, the law of unintended consequences, and how could we deal with that?

The complexities pile up and uncertainty dominates. This kind of process leads to consideration of other factors initially thought to be unrelated and what to do about them. Eventually, the sheer scope becomes too intimidating, better to leave it to someone else.