"A man was interviewing for a job. 'And remember,' said the interviewer, 'we are very keen about cleanliness. Did you wipe your shoes on the mat before entering?''Oh, yes, sir,' replied the man.The interviewer narrowed his eyes and said, 'We are also very keen about honesty. There is no mat.'”"'Cogito, ergo sum,' as the French philosopher René Descartes famously wrote. By which he meant that we know we exist precisely because we have the ability to question whether we exist," said the Rose, looking at De Nachtwacht painted by Rembrandt van Rijn."All very philosophical, says Richard Templar, however it underlines the fact that thinking is at the very root of who we are. So, it follows that the more clearly, effectively and coherently we think, the better we are able to live. Happiness and success can flow from good thinking in a way we struggle to achieve if our thought processes are muddled, messy, incoherent.Avoid echo chambers, Templar writes. When you’re a child, you don’t know any better than to think as your parents tell you to. Of course, it’s easy and comfortable to hang out with other people who broadly think the same way as you. And yet, the world is full of people, lots of them lovely people, who don’t agree with you about everything. You may rarely encounter them, but can they really all be wrong? Some of them are just as clever as you and have arrived at their beliefs in as valid a way as you have. Maybe more valid – because you’ve stopped thinking for yourself and moved in to a groupthink where your views are the collective ones, where you don’t really ever have to challenge yourself any more. You’re no longer an independent person. You’ve unwittingly become a bit of a sheep.You need to change this, shake things up, force yourself to broaden your views, listen to other ideas with a genuine open mind. About the best way to do this is to cultivate friends based on who they are, not what they believe. Aim to have friends of all ages, from other cultures, varied backgrounds, different classes from your own. Between them, they’ll make you see the world in a more nuanced way.It can be frightening to start thinking for yourself. Who knows where it could lead? There are no thought police out there–not yet anyway. So, don't be scared.Some people are more persuasive than others. Whether they’re trying to sell you a car, persuade you to adopt their plan at work, convince you to come to their party, or point out why plastic bags are bad for the environment. You need to avoid being sucked into following their line of thought blindly without engaging your own brain. If someone wants you to adopt their belief or follow their advice, you have to know why they’re seeking to persuade you. It’s always a good idea to understand what this person wants you to believe and why. Once you’ve established clearly in your mind what they want, it’s much easier to decide whether you want it too.Never mind other people’s motives for a moment–what about your own? It’s easy to think in a way that feeds your own self-interest without ever being aware that you’re doing it. It’s possible that your way of thinking will lead you to a decision that will make you better off financially, or give you higher status, or enable you to live in a better area. We’ve all met vegetarians who stopped eating meat because of their ethical views.If you’re serious about resisting other people’s manipulations and thinking for yourself, it helps to be alert to how they’re trying to influence you. If you can spot it, it’s much easier to resist. So, keep hold of your heartstrings, don't be gullible.Know who you are and take control. When it comes to interpreting what happens in your life, people fall broadly into two camps. Those who believe that it’s all down to fate and you can’t change it, and those who believe that you have free will and control your own life. Science has not yet agreed which is the case, but it has established that people who believe they control their own lives tend to be happier.Believing you control your life is crucial to resilience as well. Apart from anything else it motivates you to find ways of coping or at least new ways to think about your problems even where there’s little you can do on the face of it.Learning to think well on your own is a challenge. Of course it’s achievable, but not without effort. And once you start trying to think along with other people, the challenge gets more interesting still. It’s not only your own brain you need to manage, but everyone else’s too.When it doesn’t work, thinking with other people is frustrating, irritating, unproductive. We’ve all been there. However, two or more brains working in harmony can be far greater than the sum of their parts, and it’s a joy to be part of a group that thinks well together. Whether it’s you and your partner, your team at work, a social group or any other combination of people, several minds can generate ideas and solve problems that none of the individual.An effective team of thinkers should listen to everyone’s ideas. However they can’t follow through on all of them. Never underestimate the creative abilities of the people around you. Make sure the people around you know that they are always allowed to air ‘stupid’ ideas without fear of censure, and make sure you listen to see if you can think them into more practical ones.Now, let's leave the topic of thinking for now, let's talk about Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt idea about how Democracies die. They begin with question, 'Is our democracy in danger? It is a question we never thought we’d be asking.'During the Cold War, coups d’état accounted for nearly three out of every four democratic breakdowns. Democracies in Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, and Uruguay all died ' at the hands of men with guns'. More recently, military coups toppled Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014. In all these cases, democracy dissolved in spectacular fashion, through military power and coercion.But there is another way to break a democracy. It is less dramatic but equally destructive. Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.Blatant dictatorship—in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule—has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare. Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by different means. Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Ukraine and recently began to appear, Indonesia. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box. This is how democracies now die.On the electoral road, no president is killed, presidential palace being burned. There are no tanks in the streets. Constitutions and other nominally democratic institutions remain in place. People still vote. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance.Many government efforts to subvert democracy are 'legal,' in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy—aking the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process. Media still publish but are bought off or bullied into self-censorship. Citizens continue to criticize the government but often find themselves facing tax or other legal troubles. This sows public confusion. People do not immediately realize what is happening. Many continue to believe they are living under a democracy.Because there is no single moment—no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution—in which the regime obviously 'crosses the line' into dictatorship, nothing may set off society’s alarm bells. Those who denounce government abuse may be dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf. Democracy’s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.Levitsky and Ziblatt inspire our minds that even a country as strong as America may have its democracy dead. So, what can be done to save Democracy? About Democracy in America, Levitsky and Ziblatt write, 'Comparing our current predicament to democratic crises in other parts of the world and at other moments of history, it becomes clear that America is not so different from other nations. Our constitutional system, while older and more robust than any in history, is vulnerable to the same pathologies that have killed democracy elsewhere. Ultimately, then, American democracy depends on us—the citizens of the United States. No single political leader can end a democracy; no single leader can rescue one, either. Democracy is a shared enterprise. Its fate depends on all of us.[...] To save our democracy, Americans need to restore the basic norms that once protected it. But we must do more than that. We must extend those norms through the whole of a diverse society. We must make them truly inclusive.'Back to our topic of thinking, that however bad an experience you’re going through, you can always learn from it. Our thoughts influence our feelings. If you want to be a good thinker, you have to do the work yourself. That is to say, you have to do the thinking. You can’t let anyone else do it for you.Let's end this fragment and as closing words, allow me to say 'and Allah knows best'."The rose then waving her stalks and leaves, singing,The world is closing inand did you ever think?That we could be so close?Like brothersthe future's in the airI can feel it everywhereblowing with the wind of change *)
Citations & References:
- Richard Templar, The Rules of Thinking, 2019, Pearson
- Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 2018, Crown
*) "Wind of Change" written by Klaus Meine
