Before we get into the book, let me just say that this is a powerful piece by one of my favorite Substack writers and is a perfect example of how to think. We should never lose sight of the fact that those of us who oppose Trump are still allowed to think and debate the merits of how to win. This post does just that. His followers have already given up their right to dissent, debate and disagree because all he values is loyalty. So keep thinking while you still can.
Now into Alan Jacob’s book titled, “How to Think.” The book builds on some of our earlier reading, particularly Kahneman who wrote about System 1 and 2. Jacob says that we do not always frame our problems in the most useful and constructive way. We go astray when we think our task is overcoming bias. The fundamental problem is an orientation of the will, we suffer from a determination to avoid thinking. It tires us, takes us out of our comfort zone, it complicates our lives, and can set us at odds. We immediately enter into refutation mode and stop listening.
He references Marilynn Robinson’s essays, specifically the one about the way we speak about Puritans. She says, it is a great example of our collective eagerness to disparage without knowledge. “When the reward is the pleasure of sharing an attitude one knows is socially approved. We have an instinct for consensus. When we do not know, we substitute emotions for thoughts.”
The person who really wants to think will have to develop strategies for recognizing the subtlest of social pressures, confronting the pull of the ingroup and disgust for the outgroup. The person who wants to think will have to practice patience and master fear. To think is a risk. There is no guarantee it will bring us happiness or give us satisfaction.
He gives a real life example of how to slowly break someone out of their beliefs. It was one of the children, Megan Phelps-Roper, who grew up in the Kansas based Westboro Church. She was convinced that by “killing fags” as her father suggested, they have a chance to repent. Once she realized that was a lie, the rest of the lies began to crumble. She now speaks out against her father’s preaching.
To think independently of other people is impossible. Thinking is a social activity and face it, everything you think is in response to something someone else said. John Stuart Mill faced a life crisis by asking, “what if all your objects were realized, all the institutions and opinions could instantly be instantiated, would this bring you joy?”
The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away our feelings and emotions. When no other mental habit is cultivated and the analyzing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives, there can be a great and complex loss. We may resist really thinking because we fear where it leads us.
Jacob also references the 2012 book, the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It says that intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. Moral intuitions arise automatically and long before moral reasoning gets started and drives our later reasoning. They bind and they blind.
Some of us do have a genetic predispositions to the new. But the author thinks C.S Lewis and his idea of a desire to be in the inner ring is what really drives our thinking. We are so anxious to part of an in-group and this desire shows how people who are not bad people can be driven to do very bad things. It is a false belonging and the only real remedy is true belonging. In a big group, people can rationalize almost anything. The inner ring mocks and excludes those who ask uncomfortable questions. As I often say, nuance and finding that two things can be true at once is not always comfortable.
He lists some key essays to read on this topic; William Golding’s Thinking as a Hobby, Annie Dillard’s Seeing, which is an excerpt from “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, William G Perry’s “Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts, Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”
Below is a link to my coverage of “Thinking Fast and Slow.”
In transition between NYC and Toronto, l briefly scanned your latest post. Maryann Robinson is a phenomenon and the rest of your essay l will read and report back ASAP.