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Edited on Thu Apr-05-07 11:30 AM by The Backlash Cometh
Imagine if math was saddled with political, economic, social or religious considerations. On the religious side, Christian scientists, would of course, demand that the answers are only accurate, if they’re derived using addition (+). Hispanics would insist on sexing up the subtraction sign (-) and suggest the more curvy tilde (~). Wall Street power players would lobby to ban the color red from any computations that involve money. Tangents could be seen as a bad thing, for those who can’t follow them. And 30% of the population would support the asterisk (*), while the other 70% would be working to impeach it.
In sum, math, in its pure form, is not saddled with all these distracting variables so it works because the rules of logic remain consistent and the results are as pure and objective as the person working the formula. There are, to my knowledge, no sacred cows in mathematics. And this is the reason why two people from two different parts of the world can come up with the same answer.
With Critical Thinking, it’s not so easy. Sometimes our minds fear to even consider an option because we’ve been trained not to look behind every door. These personally learned block-outs are sacred cows. Mystery writers know these sacred cows, or taboos, very well, because they are what create a twist in the story that nobody expects. And sometimes, if you’re an analytical kind of person, you learn something about yourself when you’re surprised by your own reaction to something you once thought was tabu.
So, here’s a reminder to DU: The best little think-tank in space. Pay close attention when you come up across a sacred cow, because sometimes they’re just obstacles to reaching the truth. I can think of many topics that would illustrate this point, but I’ll use the most recent. It popped up with the announcement of Elizabeth Edward’s cancer diagnosis. Our sympathy was rightfully so with her and her husband. We all support Elizabeth because her reaction was the heroic one, the one that broke down a door. Elizabeth proved that cancer was no longer a career ender, but just one more obstacle to be managed on your way to attaining your goal. But most of us are just bystanders to this lesson, because there are more sacred cows associated with cancer, thus, more doors to breakdown.
Cancer use to be a word that people only talked about in whispers. Mostly out of fear of offending someone who had it. Now we talk about it openly but we give anyone who has cancer a wide berth. I even heard my father say, if someone in your neighborhood gets cancer, you have to let bygones be bygones. To which I disagree with completely. Because it assumes that cancer changes people and makes them better human beings. And that’s a statement which does not always ring true.
So, in sum, be on the look out for sacred cows. Ask yourself what topics you are afraid to talk about for fear of offending someone. And, sometimes your hesitation will be the right choice but other times, be aware that if you’re looking for the right answer, you might have to take the sacred cow by the horns.
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