Think Changing

Well done Madame.

In this historian’s assessment, the things that most influence a change is people’s thinking are 1) personal or societal catastrophes or traumas with lasting effects, both personal and societal, 2) slow transformations that wear away at ungrounded, ill-thought defenses of  previously accepted “thinking,” and 3) the unsettling feeling that something or somethings aren’t quite right, that the established culture is deceiving itself, and then, especially where it concerns the individual directly, that breakthrough where it is all articulated right at the time that inner turmoil about those things has reached critical mass.

The above can be either slowed or accelerated, depending on the type, character, insularity, etc. of the influential people in a person’s life.

What one fills oneself up with also plays a strong part, especially if the true things are absent (what fills a vacuum is often not good).  That pattern-disrupting question, “What good book/movie/article/talk have you absorbed lately?” is a ready formula for fruitful personal growth.

Resistance to excessive diversion, or at least balanced assessment and discernment, is important in avoiding the excessive busyness you so aptly condemn, for one must both make time to truly think and value it enough to do so.

Of course, as you so well point out, a questioning mind is the building block of a critically thinking mind, and there is little better bulwark against being deceived, manipulated, diverted, or deflected than a critically thinking mind.  It may not be foolproof, but independent true-thinkers are feared and hated by demagogues and the manipulative.

What rich and powerful people and organizations are able to do does become harder to resist when they are in control of much of the basic portions of Maslow’s hierarchy.  More than one person has sold his or her independent thoughts due to economic necessity.  And a whole lot more have sold them due to greed and avarice.

And legions are kept at the survival level where their thoughts are often swallowed up by exhaustion and the hardships of eking out subsistence every day. 

And what happens when resentment builds among the impoverished?  It is most often evaded or diverted by the selfishly rich and powerful.  They are long experts in diverting emotion, constructing false narratives, and fashioning hapless scapegoats.  It is an unfortunate historical pattern we must first recognize before we can do anything about it.