Critical Self-Consciousness

as your post progresses (your best one ever i think) it shows how much she knew.



i agree.



i think the ego can tell us useful things too, but i agree with you in the sense that we should learn to control it. if our ego was dominant all the time or even usually, it might stop us from seeing a lot of important things. when people learn to turn it off, they become enlightened. although i think there is more than one variety of enlightenment.



oh yes. all forms of bigotry are based in the ego. sexism, nationalism, racism...



yeah, if you want to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, study psychology and become a psychologist. if you want to make more, study psychology and go work in advertising.



well said! but i think this persepctive affects not only "critics" of critical thinking, (if there are any,) but proponents as well. a lot of people seem arbitrarily negative, assuming they are being objective: "i just tell it like it is!"



i think that's the most spiritual thing you've ever said on this forum, actually. i appreciate that it can be philosophical, too. in fact, i think it's the also most philosophical thing you've said on this forum. hold onto this one.



i think you've gone an extra step (not a false one) with this, and it's great. the part that i like is the word "self." we spend a lot of energy trying to force people to change. help is one thing, but forcing people often causes resistance. when we work towards *self*consciousness, there is less to resist.

it can always help society for people to become more conscious of themselves. for instance, we're already aware of everyone *else's* imperfections, but as i said, those take a lot more energy to work on, it's not as efficient, and the results overall will never compare- although i think appealing to the humanity in people still works most of the time, people don't always reach greater self-consciousness in the timeframe we would provide for it.

tinygiraffe

I am pleased that we agree. I think that everyone of us who comprehends the importance of these matters needs to promote these ideas to our fellows on these Internet forums. The Internet is a great way to introduce these important ideas especially to young people. Take your understanding to other forums and tell everyone who will listen the value of these ideas.

i think the more people share ideas in general, the more redundant indoctrination will be.

if we move towards the point where everyone knows everything, or is familiar with as many concepts as possible, then people will be informed to make their own decisions. in effect, it would be the practice of your philosophy, to be critical of everything.

i stand by the very silly quote from the xfiles, "what happened to trust no one, mulder?" "oh i changed it to trust everyone, didn't i tell you?"

by "trusting" everyone, which isn't to say letting other people make every decision for you, you can learn a lot about the world very quickly. if you trust that everyone has some kind of truth, it's a lot easier to find your own faults, but also understand the people that say "don't trust this or this." you can trust skeptics, too.

it's not to say that everyone is equally right, just that everyone is partially right. this is the most positive form of criticism in general, and it can be applied to the self, also. we are all partially wrong, we can all try to find out which things we're right and wrong about, we can all learn more when we "empty our cups" of the ideas we're sure about, and listen to other people, and examine our own thoughts from the outside. this is what i think you want to do with philosophy. i want to use it to heal religion, since that aspect of humanity isn't going anywhere. http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2934656#2934656