The Blog:
Almost Real World
A Different Look at Applied Thinking
The topic of my latest blog is politics. What do politics have to do with thinking, you ask? I guess it depends on how hard we look and what we're willing to see. MikeD
July 20, 2008
Head-On Politics
Some time ago, I started seeing a commercial for a headache remedy called Head-On. The commercial was one of those
pounding assaults
that everyone hates, which naturally made everyone want to buy the product.
You could relieve your head pain in two ways: you could rub this stick on your
head and the pain would disappear, or you could put your TV on mute when the
commercial came on.
It now turns out that the concept of the product was developed years earlier by a far-thinking, bipartisan group of Washington politicians. The political version works the same way as the headache remedy; apply the remedy directly to the symptom and the pain goes away.
The politicians had realized that Americans don’t really want to fix anything. We just want the pain to go away. To actually fix a problem, you’ve got to do lots of things that most of us spend our lives avoiding. First you’ve got to stop denying the problem; then you have to tinker, sometimes forcefully, with the status quo to fix the problem. We’re talking messy, hard work here. Maybe even sacrifice. Try to sell that on the political stump.
In this political season, once again all the rhetoric seems to stay within
Americans’
comfort zone of superficial quick fixes. That’s great, but it would be helpful if
politicians would categorize their ideas to make the superficiality clear. I think we should
call the category Head-On Politics, if we can get the owners of the name to agree. Here’s a
list of topics along with recommendations for handling them:
- Head-On Immigration: Make enough noise to satisfy activists and simulate progress.
Don’t actually do anything and blame the opposition for the failure.
- Head-On Gas Prices: Commiserate about the high gasoline cost, and then convince Americans that they shouldn’t complain because gas costs more in Europe.
- Head-On Healthcare: Commiserate about the high cost of healthcare – twice the European average. Then tell Americans that they need to spend the extra money because it pays for pharmaceutical research and insurance that is based on the cost of healthcare.
- Head-On Biofuel: Require a blend of corn ethanol and gasoline to reduce dependence on foreign oil. Recommend eating fast foods to control food budgets as corn prices rise.
- Head-On War: Engage in war to free a people. Stay as long as it takes for them to
understand our definition of freedom.
- Head-On Taxes: Keep the argument manageable, focused on class warfare and who should pay. Never, ever discuss reducing government waste to reduce taxes.
As the campaigning rages on, you’re going to hear these and other Head-On topics discussed often. If the pain of repetition becomes too much, remember the Head-On solution: turn on the TV mute to make the pain go away. MikeD
Tags:
Head-On Politics,
Head-On Immigration, Head-On Gas Prices, Head-On Healthcare, Head-On Biofuel, Head-On War, Head-On Taxes,
June 9, 2008
Stovetop Thinking
“Why write about thinking? Ideas are just things that bubble up from our acquired knowledge.”
I heard this comment about a year ago, and it has stuck in my mind ever since. Why, indeed, study and ponder something we get for free?
This person sees thinking as some sort of convection process. Conceived in a stew of knowledge, ideas are forced to the surface where we can savor them.
Actually, it’s not a bad explanation of one phase of thinking. But as you examine this stovetop model, you can see the points where thinking can make all the difference. You choose the pieces of knowledge that are the ingredients in your recipe. In the cooking process, a lot of ideas begin to burst out of the stew; you must choose among them. Then you must decide how to season those ideas and get them ready to be served to an uncertain future.
Of course, as the observer implied a year ago, none of this intervention is required. Those ideas will bubble to the surface without our help and we can simply grab the most convenient one for our needs.
Now what we must decide is whether careful thought can improve our cooking. I think so.
MikeD
Tags:
stovetop thinking, acquired knowledge
Public education:
Just another burden?
One of the major themes in this website is that thinking is a learnable skill. Some of this learning comes from life experience, but experience has limitations. You’re learning anecdotally, with trial and error, some aspects of thinking. The question is, what are you missing?
Usually, what’s missing are breadth, structure, and a good general plan for effective thinking. The best way to get these powerful skills is in school, in a program aimed at teaching thinking.
Today, such thinking programs seem to be seriously threatened as we cope with the current tough economic times. Regardless of how long the economic downturn lasts, the effect on so-called non-basic programs, such as teaching thinking, threatens to be very long lasting.
A view is emerging that public education is a burden that a sensible culture would
minimize. In reality, of course, an educated population is a national resource.
The better that resource, the more we’ll see high quality jobs and a high
standard of living for Americans.
MikeD