Beyond Feelings - Vincent Ruggiero.original_ [62]
Finally, whenever you are addressing an issue, anticipate what problems are likely to undermine your thinking, and make a conscious effort to resist their influence.
CHALLENGE AND REWARD
It is one thing to understand the steps to improving your thinking and quite another to use them effectively. The latter task is a formidable challenge. It will take continuing effort over a long period of time.
Is the challenge worth the effort? Let's consider what is known about the role of thinking in everyday life. The most respected educators stress the importance of getting beyond mere memorizing and reflecting on the significance and application of facts. Thinking skill is necessary to understand and profit form college courses. Business and professional leaders stress that proficiency in thinking is necessary to solve problems and make decisions on the job. (All the books written in recent years about excellence underline the value of thinking skills.)
In addition, more and more psychologists are affirming that thinking skills play a crucial role in our personal lives. The leading form of psychotherapy in this country, in fact, is cognitive therapy. It is based on the idea that most mental problems (neuroses) result form faulty thinking habits. Noted psychologist Albert Ellis, founder of the Institute of Rational-Emotive Therapy, writes, "Man can live the most self-fulfilling, creative, and emotionally satisfying life by intelligently organizing and disciplining his thinking."
Like other famous psychologists before him, Ellis notes that to organize our thinking we must wrestle with our own negative tendencies. "As Freud and his daughter Anna accurately observed," he says, "and as Adler agreed, humans are prone to avoid focusing on and coping with their problems and instead often sweep them under the rug by resorting to rationalization, denial, compensation, identification, projection, avoidance, repression, and other defensive maneuvers."
In short, though the challenge of improving your thinking is great, no other kind of self-improvement can affect every areas of your life so positively.
APPLICATIONS
Examine yourself in light of the questions presented in the chapter. Don't settle for things you already know about yourself. Try to expand your self-awareness. And don't ignore your less favorable characteristics. Discuss the results of your self-examination.
Apply your critical thinking to each of the following cases. Make a conscious effort to apply your new self-knowledge, anticipate the problems in thinking to which you will be vulnerable, and resist their influence on your judgment.
Some educators are urging that the colleges become more selective than they have been in the past few decades. Specifically, these people propose that remedial courses be eliminated and entrance requirements tightened. This would mean that students who are deficient in basic skills, and poor marks in high school, or did poorly on admissions tests would not be accepted for college. Do you agree with this view?
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance that would allow "live-in lovers" to qualify for the city's employee insurance programs. The measure was designed to allow homosexuals and unmarried heterosexuals to establish domestic partnerships and qualify for the same life and health insurance benefits traditionally limited to husbands and wives. Many people, including a majority of the gay community, endorsed the proposal. Others opposed it. The San Francisco Examiner, for example, editorialized against it, reasoning that "the notion that an unmarried relationship is the equivalent of marriage is an attack on social norms." The mayor voted the proposal1. Do you believe she was correct in doing so?
An outstanding senior English major (with a 3.7 grade-point average out of a possible 4.0) at Princeton University submitted an analysis of a novel for her Spanish-American novel course. Her professor determined that the paper was