| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 4:02:53 PM | Our society is not much better than a pack of lemmings; everybody just mindlessly follows the swarm. They merely "copy-cat" whatever they see somebody else doing, and never seem to ask themselves why they are doing it.
* A sports athlete decides to grow a certain kind of beard, and the next thing you know... guys everywhere start growing exactly the same kind of beard.
* A Rap "singer" (pardon the expression) decides to wear a baseball cap backwards on his head, and the next thing you know... kids everywhere are wearing their baseball caps backwards.
It's a case of "monkey see -- monkey do".
And in the music industry, a list of the "Top 40" (or "Top" whatever) songs is published so that you can find out which ones you're supposed to like. (Heaven forbid that you should actually like something that nobody else likes!  )
And this "follow the leader" mentality is not limited to just the fashion and entertainment industries. It also manifests itself in our everyday thinking (or, more properly, in our non-thinking).
For example, have you ever used a word like, "workaholic"? If so, have you ever stopped to think about what that word should really mean? (If an "alcoholic" is someone who is addicted to "alcohol", then a "workaholic" must be someone who is addicted to "workahol"... whatever that might be. ) Therefore the correct word for someone who is addicted to "work" should have been "workic", and not "workaholic".
There are many more such examples that I could cite. But whenever someone points out such inconsistancies to others, what happens? Do they admit that they have been wrong all this time?
Nope! Not on your life!
Instead, they merely offer feeble excuses (like "Oh, that isn't really important", or "Everyone know what I mean"), as if that somehow excuses the fact that they are wrong. And then they go right back and continue being wrong again.
Lemmings! | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 4:26:54 PM | | It is the way of the sheeple, my friend. What we are experiencing is the death of critical thinking in recent years, coupled with a basic human (group) instinct to want to "belong". | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 4:28:16 PM | i think we are hardwired with the desire to fit in...even dogs try to copy each other..
it takes a human, rational mind to break the spell....
here is a post that i wrote earlier..maybe it better fits in here...
I think alot of the arguments on the threads on POF come down to one thing....how scientifically skeptical is the arguer??
Skepticism (often the scientific way of showing that one "does not know about that for sure", is fundamental to progress. It is this kind of healthy debate between cutting edge leaders in science that allows us to come closer to the truth. Creationists will tell you that this kind of debate is somehow evidence that scientists are wrong...clearly most of us can see the illogic of that, but thats another thread.
Take one example. Many of you may have heard of Ben Underwood, a boy who had retinal cancer at a young age, was then blind, and subsequently developed human echolocation.
Now, human echolocation is generally accepted as possible, even by echolocation experts. However, no real quantitative tests have been done to see to what extent it is possible. So should we just believe that many blind children and adults are doing this??
I saw the MSNBC special on Ben Underwood. He was very convincing. He used clicking noises with his tongue, and was able to accurately tell the reporter where a fire hydrant and a garbage can were (although he at first mistook the garbage can for a car).
Now, very few people really know the exact medical condition of this boy. It is stated that he had his eyes removed, but his entire eye?? was some portion of the retina left? We dont know. Is it possible he retained enough sight to make out outlines of objects?? we dont know.
I noticed one thing during the MSNBC special. Ben was able to play videogames!!!!. At first, nothing seems out of the ordinary about this, but when you think of it...echolocation acts by using sound to bounce off THREE DIMENSIONAL objects. The flat screen of a videogame is two dimensional...you can not make out two dimensional images using echolocation!!
Does this disprove human echolocation? of course not. But it raises an eyebrow.
Limited echolocation is surely possible....you can try the experiment yourself. I tried it. If you continue making a "shhhhhhhhhhh" sound with your mouth with your eyes closed, and pass your hand up and down over your face (an inch or two from your face) you can tell the sound changes when your hand is directly over your mouth.
But does this equate to being able to see fire hydrants from yards away?? I'm not sure.
Yet it is generally accepted.
Any thoughts on this type of scientific skepticism?? (which, in many cases, can be summed up as "i dont know" | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 5:35:07 PM | You've never had workahol? Man, you're really missing out, it's good stuff 
Seriously though, I agree with you on everything but "workaholic". While you're technically right, workic just sounds stupid and workaholic conveys the meaning better. Sometimes you have to know when to break the rules. The person who originally came up with workaholic probably wasn't one of the lemming/sheeple you are writing about because he went against common convention and came up with something better (back when the term came out, it was still trendy to use proper english). Or maybe not, heh. But yeah, I prefer outside of the box people.
I saw the MSNBC special on Ben Underwood. He was very convincing. He used clicking noises with his tongue, and was able to accurately tell the reporter where a fire hydrant and a garbage can were (although he at first mistook the garbage can for a car).
Now, very few people really know the exact medical condition of this boy. It is stated that he had his eyes removed, but his entire eye?? was some portion of the retina left? We dont know. Is it possible he retained enough sight to make out outlines of objects?? we dont know.
I saw a different piece on him somewhere quite a while ago. The only thing that's really unique about him is that he makes his own sounds. I think it's rare, but other blind people have been taught to do the same thing, but they use little hand held clickers.
I noticed one thing during the MSNBC special. Ben was able to play videogames!!!!. At first, nothing seems out of the ordinary about this, but when you think of it...echolocation acts by using sound to bounce off THREE DIMENSIONAL objects. The flat screen of a videogame is two dimensional...you can not make out two dimensional images using echolocation!!
I didn't see the part with him playing video games or don't remember it, but I have an anecdote that relates. Some years ago, a friend and I played a lot of Mortal Kombat. Just for kicks we decided to try blind-fighting, so we ran the game through the VCR and recorded us fighting blindfolded (yes, we were geeks). You can tell from the sounds in the game what's happening, when you need to block, what move your opponent is doing, etc. Watching the tape afterwards, we certainly weren't on the top of our form, but we did halfway decently, and we haven't been blind from a young age. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 5:51:51 PM | Between the ages of 2 and 10, I'd imagine that if somebody asked me my viewpoint on a matter that didn't revolve around the limited things that I was interested in, I wouldnt of been able to contribute. I was quite a mouthy kid. Quick to assume. It was a little after those years that I think I started to listen to my dad. My teens were filled with memories of him correcting me.
You make a good point with the 'cap on backwards' statement 'Mrlogic' re: msg 1. If the majority of the world have it hard wired into them to follow, maybe the most important thing is not that the cap is being turned backwards by everyone but how wise the individual is who turns his cap around first?
Do what you thinks right.
And you will feel alright.
Coz when your bad you will feel sad.
That's the religion I live by.
(Michael Skinner, 'The Streets'). | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 5:55:42 PM |
For example, have you ever used a word like, "workaholic"? If so, have you ever stopped to think about what that word should really mean? (If an "alcoholic" is someone who is addicted to "alcohol", then a "workaholic" must be someone who is addicted to "workahol"... whatever that might be. ) Therefore the correct word for someone who is addicted to "work" should have been "workic", and not "workaholic".
I disagree with that example.
-ic
Use ic in a Sentence
1. a suffix forming adjectives from other parts of speech, occurring originally in Greek and Latin loanwords (metallic; poetic; archaic; public) and, on this model, used as an adjective-forming suffix with the particular senses “having some characteristics of” (opposed to the simple attributive use of the base noun) (balletic; sophomoric); “in the style of” (Byronic; Miltonic); “pertaining to a family of peoples or languages” (Finnic; Semitic; Turkic).
2. Chemistry. a suffix, specialized in opposition to -ous, used to show the higher of two valences: ferric chloride.
3. a noun suffix occurring chiefly in loanwords from Greek, where such words were originally adjectival (critic; magic; music). http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=ic&search=search
The logic follows that the word workic would have a different meaning from the already used word workaholic. The meaning of workic, using the sense "having some characteristics of", would probably be an adjective describing something about a noun who's set had the element work. A workaholic on the other hand has the meaning something/person addicted to work.
aholic is a combining form extracted from the word alcohol, which was derived from the arabic word al-kuḥl. The word aholic has the sense "a person who has an addiction to or obsession with some object or activity". This a far different meaning than the suffix -ic.
Your logic wasn't quiet accurate because it was like equating the word "to" with "together". Just because they share the same spelling doesn't mean they share the same meaning.
^^The above is an example of thinking for myself. I didn't take what you said at face value and researched the subject in a way that was more logical to me. This is great for academia and debates but in everyday life its just plain annoying. If the top 40 charts say a song should be in the top 40 and I listen to it and it doesn't sound like utter garbage, then I'm putting it on my Ipod. I just can't be bothered with subjecting my ears to thousands of other music that I might find utterly crap. Unless I wanted to make a fashion statement of course. Everything has its place and following the mold is a benefit sometimes. Its just for the person to hope their not in the group that walks off the cliff. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 5:59:29 PM | I just finished talking to a 3000 year old man, and he said people criticize everything way too much nowadays.
Back in his day, going against the norm was a cry to be hung from the gallows!
And back then...they liked it that way!
Finicky fee flippity floo flah, I say! | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 6:01:00 PM | Skepticism: I agree skepticism is a valuable part of the process. It needs to be turned upon itself as well, what am I skeptical of? and why? what do I accept without skepticism?
Turning the baseball cap backward... usually the 'superstar' who started it all, saw some punk do it at his show.
It has alot to do with age, I noticed similiar type of behaviour in myself when I was younger, I really wanted a label, punk or whatever, today, I'll settle for human being. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 6:27:10 PM | You know the eyes in the back of a mother's head? I have those. I've been driving since I was a young kid on a ranch and I've never learned to look behind me, not even in a mirror before going in reverse. I've never had an accident or even a close call. I feel guilty and try to change, but no consequence yet.
I've been blind farsighted in my left eye since I was four from a car accident. I am nearsighted in my right. I have double vision at all times. I've since been able to perceive things with my left eye that I shouldn't be able to see. I speed read crazy fast because my brain learned the fuzzy shape of a word and it interprets it in clarity.
When I had a stroke and became so light sensitive that I had to have both eyes patched over, I learned to do everything "blind" and I still have a habit of walking, showering, eating, etc., with my eyes closed. Ironically, I often bump my shins with my eyes open but have never had so much as a bruise walking with my eyes shut. I fire at the shooting range and my accuracy is much higher (all center mass either way) when I just close my eyes.
I recall watching a science show about a man who was totaly blind and they did several experiments with him, there does seem to be some kind of "third eye". He could answer if a line was vertical or horizontal on a screen even if turned away from the video screen.
My brother used to have a lot of fun displaying my "psychic powers" with cards, making me guess what the card was, what color. My accuracy was scary, but not psychic. Intuitive, but not supernatural. I could judge a lot about the person holding it, and sometimes I was sure that I could see through the card to the other side, especially with my eyes closed.
I don't use any kind of echolocation when walking blind, I feel a kind of balance or imbalance, when space is empty and clear, things feel heavy at my feet, as I near obstacles, I will feel a weight shift and avoid it. If the weight shift is low and has a certain weight I've become familiar with, I know it's a curb. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 6:41:50 PM | They do think for themselves. Seems like that's half of the problem since nobody has bothered to teach enough people about how to think CRITICALLY.
Many of the people who think for themselves do so at the expense of their problem solving capacity. They think independently alright...much of the time they think independently of facts , logic , and truth. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 7:29:12 PM |
By the way, you have a misspelling.
As I said in my post in another thread in this forum:
In mai opinyun, thare shudent be ownlee wun korekt way to
spel a werd. Eny way thats konsistint and inteligibul
shud be aloud. That way we wudent allwayz hav to go
lukin up werdz in a dikshunary to see how sumbudy ELSE
thinks they'r SUPOS to be speld. (And besydz, hoo told
the gy hoo ROWT the dikshunary how to spel HIZ werdz?)
(So, as you saw from my "misspelling", I reely do praktis wut I preech. ) | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 8:37:13 PM | | You should not disrespect the lemmings -- that whole mindless following thing was cooked up by bad science and popularized by the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness -- they are in fact solitary animals that socialize only to mate -- like most rodents. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 8:41:55 PM | at hereshecomesagain:
very interesting...i think you should go to a Center for Inquiry and be tested. As you stated, its not psychic or supernatural...somehow you are likely using one of your five senses..or a combination. As for knowing the pictures on cards, the only thing i can think of is that you are picking up cues from the person holding the card. Interesting.
Experimenting with your situation would definately be a trial in thinking for oneself. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/2/2009 8:53:46 PM | You should not disrespect the lemmings -- that whole mindless following thing was cooked up by bad science and popularized by the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness -- they are in fact solitary animals that socialize only to mate -- like most rodents.
From Wikipedia:
"Driven by strong biological urges, they will migrate in large groupings when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can and do swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. On occasion, and particularly in the case of the Norway lemmings in Scandinavia, large migrating groups will reach a cliff overlooking the ocean. They will stop until the urge to press on causes them to jump off the cliff and start swimming, sometimes to exhaustion and death. Lemmings are also often pushed into the sea as more and more lemmings arrive at the shore."
(Not that any of this is important to the actual point that I'm trying to make.) | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/3/2009 1:35:58 AM |
Our society is not much better than a pack of lemmings; everybody just mindlessly follows the swarm.
I assume you don't include yourself in that list. If you find I'm on it, please strike my name too.
And this "follow the leader" mentality...
I guess most people think they can't be a leader themselves and figure they're better off following one. There isn't much I can say about that except that there's a lot of "followers." To paraphrase P.T. Barnum, "There's one born every minute." Let's hope the lemmings wake up before they drown.
The sorry state of humanity is the source of my sorrows. Please excuse me as I drown them.  | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/3/2009 2:38:42 AM | @ Brightspark
The Beer's on me! Cold beer frees the mind and opens it up to the possibilities of things as they could (and hopefully will) be.
Hangovers are a small price to pay for the benefits of Utopia. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/3/2009 2:59:24 AM | | Well when it's been taught by the most dominant religion through the ages that we are a herd of sheep to be tended to by a Shepard, what can you expect. I like to think that I do think for myself, but I would be lying if I said I never did something because someone else was doing it. Most of the time these days though I do similar things to others because I see the room for improvement that I'm confident I can pull off. But there are plenty of circumstances where doing things the same avoids a lot of grief and unnecessary stress. I'm not saying that's the case with pop culture, certainly as hell isn't, but it is the case in some more important things in life where a change is needed more than anything else. | |
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| Why is everyone so afraid to think for themselves?
Posted: 7/3/2009 5:03:46 AM | " The non-imitative life is the best revenge ".
Markus Aurelius, the " Meditations ".
" Whatever you do with your life , do what no one else wants to do ".
G. I. Gurdjieff's grandmothers advice.
" No one goes there anymore.... it's too crowded ".
Yogi Berra, on a popular restaurant. | |
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