HOW TO THINK

(perspective, structure and sanity)

In his recently published book The Premonition, Michael Lewis reveals how the world’s anti-pandemic plan was created by a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl working on a science project. He then exposes the inability of the American political, medical, scientific, and administrative systems to implement the existing plan or any other plan.

Dominic Cummings, the former Chief Advisor to the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, described before a Parliamentary Committee how the reactions to the Pandemic outbreak were slow, confused, misinformed, and generally mismanaged.

In his recent book Doom, Niall Ferguson describes how the Eisenhower Administration in 1957 reacted to the deadly global flu pandemic of that year. It was contained in America using simple and effective methods with little impact on the economy and with the help of a vaccine created much more quickly than the COVID-19 vaccines, at a fraction of the cost.

Much progress has been made in the years since the end of the Second World War, but two crucial areas seem to be in terminal decline: basic health and clear thinking. These are not unconnected, as all the thinking centers in the body are organs that depend on good health to operate properly, but problems are compounded by the assault of modern concepts and technology on basic thought. That assault is unprecedented in human history, and so we have a crisis that goes by many names, but is basically the inability of the citizen to think.

For those of you who follow this blog, here are some crucial truths, as well as tools and techniques to think properly, make better decisions, and in so doing gain an advantage.

Morgan D. Jones in the Thinker's Toolkit brings an approach to thinking which recognizes the fundamentals of Rudolph Flesch’s Clear Thinking, while not being the same theory. Jones, a CIA veteran and trainer, is very technical, while the Austrian migrant Flesch has set a very sound basis for thinking.

The intersection of both men is in the realisation that human beings are flawed in the way in which our mind works, and this flaw through fair means and foul can lead to a thought process that is fundamentally unsound and so results in decisions that are less than optimal.

You will have to make thousands of decisions in your life. Most will be trivial, the majority cumulative, and a few significant to the outcome of your existence. This is how you think, this is how you decide.

When faced with a decision, no matter how big or small the problem, we have to go one way or another, or not at all.

What Flesch and Jones agree on is that feelings and emotions have to be conquered, subdued, and compelled to your will. But how do we know our will?

In thinking, we cannot begin at the end. We have to gather what we know and seek to understand what it means.

Both the Thinker’s Toolkit from Jones and Clear Thinking from Flesch make the basic point that if you do not work to establish perspective (a point of view) and understand that each situation has many possible perspectives, then clear thinking is not possible.

Wherever you are, whoever you are, you should equip yourself here. Thereafter, this is the deal.

The largest influence on your existence are the decisions you make.

Most of the things you decide, no matter how long you think about them will come from certain core beliefs that you hold dear.

You have to disrupt yourself to recognise perspective and to apply it, over and over again.

Perspective equals diversity. Never mind what surrounds you. Personal diversity; this must be your aim.

Personal diversity allows us to identify and confront bias and so challenge our mindset. We can then appreciate different perspectives and decide which one is most appropriate for the decision at hand.

After perspective we need structure. This is where the Thinker's Toolkit excels, there are fourteen tools described in the book. I will not go into any details here. You can see a summary here, but what follows are some crucial points to understand.

• Not every tool is for every problem, with a grasp of perspective you will be able to use the right tools for the situation.

• You have to work to understand the underlying assumptions you are unconsciously making, bring them into the light of day and examine them.

• Qualify your sources of information as you analyse the situation, to make sure they are reliable and have a track record of accuracy.

• Generally, you build a good base by establishing perspective, gather information from qualified sources, then choose the right tools to structure the problem. Hopefully, the decision will then make itself.

• Sanity check, at each stage. Stop and ask yourself if this makes sense. Common sense. If not, revisit.

• Practice on even the smallest decisions, decision making is a practice, a high IQ or great education is of no help. Anyone of reasonable cognitive abilities can become good at making even complex decisions by working to master perspective, structure and sanity.