A Cycle of Truth

The first time my kids walked into California’s Lego Store at Downtown Disney, their feet stuck to the floor. Their eyes panned from wall to ceiling the bins of Legos. Slowly they turned to see tables filled with Legos. The floor allowed their feet to move as they began to explore the shelves stuffed with Lego kits to be purchased and blithely taken home to be constructed. 

Our relationship with the amount of information we have access to is similar. How to process it all? What is a conspiracy theory and what is truth? How to tell the difference. What to do if it Feels true? 

How did we even get to this reality of multiple truths?

Before The Plague our relationship with truth was based on nature. What we could see, taste and touch. Anything outside of that was ethereal. The Gods or Spirits were in control of it.  As plagues and natural disasters happened throughout history, our relationship with Nature changed. 

We asked questions. 

We developed answers.

Those answers worked until the next natural disaster or plague. 

Then…

We asked more questions.

We revised old answers.

We created new answers to new questions.

Our cycle of thought  continued until The Great Plague. It birthed the Renaissance, which  changed everything. By 1715-1789 the way we thought about the natural world bloomed into the Age of Enlightenment. All those questions and answers, the seeds of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolmey fed Galileo, Newton, Freud, Jung, and the list goes on. 

Truth was no longer absolute. Truth became relevant to the facts presented. 

What was once a Brontosaurus is now an Apatosaurus body with a possible Camarasaurus head.  

Pluto was a planet. Then it wasn’t. Then it was.Tomorrow…?

The Enlightenment wove together centuries of philosophy, religion, science and art, birthed from the Renaissance, into a streamlined conclusion. It is a rubric we all still work from to this day. 

Our current Scientific Method.

Critical Thinking

Skepticism

Rationalizing 

Natural History

Liberalism

The Constitution

Separation of Church and State

I could go on, but it is a deep rabbit hole and that’s what you have the internet for.

With all of the political and social unrest of late, I keep hearing the terms “Critical Thinking” and “Bias” thrown around. It only adds to the information confusion. Why?

Because Truth is relative to the experience of the listener, based on the rules the Age of Enlightenment gave us. Truth is filtered through the lense of our own experiences, thoughts, philosophies, pain, pleasures and beliefs. These terms thrown around are meaningless words if no one takes the time to define them. 

For me, they sound like a long list of criticisms in a never ending argument:

“Check your bias.”

“Think critically.”

“Have common sense.”

“Ya Snowflake!”

“Ok Boomer!”

And scene.

It is right here that I, and most people, STOP. 

They walk away from the conversation.

Why? 

No one is listening.

The first rule of the Age of Enlightenment is forgotten: to be ENLIGHTENED. To be curious. To learn. Take a step back and weigh all the possibilities. The consequences of harm or benefit. During the 1700s, people would gather in Coffee Houses simply to talk about opposing views. Do openly discuss and disagree.

However, they did not argue. They debated. The difference?

An argument is when two people are talking to prove their own point and not listening to the other. They don’t agree and oftentimes walk away angry. 

A debate is when two people are exchanging ideas, listening and considering the other person’s point of view. They never have to agree, however they do walk away on friendly terms. 

In a debate, we learn. We expand our knowledge, empathy, and the ability to form relevant truth.

Add in the plethora of information in media, internet, podcasts, books, journalism, etc? How does anyone make any sense of it?

Here is where I start:

First I define terms:

What does Bias mean?

Bias a person’s view of the world. It is our nature for the world to bend to our senses. Our Ego desires everything to match up with how we think. 

“If everyone would just do what I tell them, life would be much better.”

The way we process information is the same way. Our Ego has an idea. It begins to look for evidence to support this idea. The more it looks for evidence, the more it sees, the more the Ego feels safer and stronger in it’s point of view. This process is called Confirmation Bias.

Confirmation Bias is the beginning of my Critical Thinking process. When a piece of information comes my way, I stop and consider. 

Do I immediately FEEL like it’s right? (red flag) 

Do I immediately agree with it? (yellow flag) 

Does it make me curious? (green flag)

How I respond determines how I investigate. If I respond in a Red or Yellow flag way, I know that my Confirmation Bias has kicked in. I need to take a step back and look at some facts. Sometimes that means looking into opposing viewpoints. However, I keep an eye out for emotional language and absolutes in their perspective. If I hear either one, I skip to the next piece of information. I try to set my Confirmation Bias, Emotions and Beliefs aside while I am information gathering.

What does Critical Thinking mean?

Once I have identified my personal Bias, I can apply Critical Thinking. My recipe for processing the information I gathered is this: 

Occam’s Razor: basically states, “the simplest solution is most likely the right one.”

Balanced with Newton’s Third Law: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”

With a dash of Murphy’s Law “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

My Working Conclusion is the end result. I call it a Working Conclusion because it isn’t final. My conclusion can change based on new information. If I call it an absolute Conclusion I am giving into my Confirmation Bias and no longer thinking critically. I want to stay as far away from the  slippery slope to “Snowflake/ Ok Boomer” land, which leads absolutely nothing productive.

It is great to have ideas and think them all the way through to a working conclusion, but what then? How do I turn the idea into something productive? This is honestly the most important part for me. Whatever the end result of my Critical Thinking journey, it should help increase my empathy for others while learning to extend grace to myself. From that point I can create a plan of action.

It is a swamp of overwhelming information out there. The trickiest part is figuring out how to get through it all with sanity, while remembering to Love my neighbor as Myself.

That is what Tenacious Optimism looks like.