Uh oh…deep waters ahead. Grab a life vest and proceed cautiously. Nothing like taking on indoctrinated, emotional and socially acceptable, inherited long held beliefs. Do You have beliefs protected from the scrutiny of sound thought?

I started out to write about this quote:

“You can’t reason someone out of something that they weren’t reasoned into in the first place.” ~Jonathan Swift and/or Mark Twain

At first it made sense to me and I agreed with the philosophy. Then I started doing some research and my critical thinking and skepticism (AKA reasoning) kicked in and has me thinking differently. In other words I didn’t accept the statement with reasoning, I just read it and believed it, most likely on an emotional level. It felt right.

But if the statement is true, I would not have been able to reason myself out of believing it and yet this is precisely what I did.

Interesting to say the least

I think that most people would agree with and even use skepticism, critical thinking and logical reasoning as tools when discerning new choices and opportunities. The reason we do this is due to the fact that we are thinking beings. We value evidence and reason.

But do we apply this reasoning to those beliefs that were simply handed to us?

Not so much.

Think about this.

Had someone not been brave enough to think critically and determine that the earth was indeed round, we might still be believing it is flat. If you take the above quote at face value, just as the belief of a flat earth was taken at one time, no one should have been able to figure out it wasn’t flat because they weren’t reasoned into believing it was flat so they shouldn’t have been able to reason out of that belief.

My head hurts a little just thinking about this and luckily I know that just the fact that it hurts, is a good thing.

Realizing that I value critical and sound thinking, allows me to question beliefs that I thought were immune from analysis. Life is about change, movement, flow. Be willing to apply sound thought and let go of beliefs that you are clinging to. Start enjoying the ride!