Surprising Findings or Maybe Not

Several students shared these three articles with me and although they are not unique – I’ve seen hundreds of these articles in the last few years – I had to pass them along in the context of thinking and thinking about thinking which, as most of you know, has occupied our attention lately.

Big blow to statin drugs market as scientists discover LDL cholesterol isn’t the ‘bad guy’ after all

1162 Lawsuits Filed Against Pfizer for Damages due to Lipitor

Senior Government Scientist Breaks 13 Years’ Silence on CDC’s Vaccine-autism Fraud

And the same article on a Canadian website

Senior Government Scientist Breaks 13 Years’ Silence on Centers for Disease Control Vaccine-Autism Fraud

We’ve been talking a lot about thinking critical thinking that is. These three articles rise the implicit choices one could make in spite of the global business agenda. Now, I am not a medical doctor and I have no opinion about medications and if you have a medical condition you should consult your doctor.

I am simply talking here about the power of the mind to think critically or… not.

When I grew up I had a neighbor who was an academic and professor at some university who lived across from us. One of his favorite lines was “Credulity and naiveté are one step away from stupidity. Sometimes it is hard to know in which direction“. Then, I could not understand what he meant, but today I realize he was talking about the mind’s ability to discern and ask meaningful questions before accepting some loud touted “truth”.

Just by way of refreshing our memories, NLP is most useful in our struggle to find a way to explain why we do what we do, why we behave the way we behave, and how we make the decisions we make.

At the top of this ladder – what we call “this is just the way I am” – is the understanding that we “are” NOT anything. We have beliefs, values, decisions and attitudes which may not even be ours. They were put in our minds too early for us to even have a say. We are not our beliefs, and decisions, and values and attitudes. And we can change all these if we so desire. This is the principle on which Time Line Therapy® is based.

However.

Just as an aside, what I am saying here should be clear to all our graduates both from the NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner trainings. Whether people believe authority unquestioningly and unthinkingly, any authority that is – real or imaginary – is mostly a matter of values levels thinking which in turn are attached to a bunch of beliefs and decisions relating in their turn to attitudes. Expressive values levels (values levels three, five and seven) tend to think more for themselves (whether their thinking is correct or not that’s another issue), nevertheless they have the place of decision making inside the self. Sacrificial values levels (that is values levels two, four and six) place the locus of their decision making (again correctly or not) outside themselves on some authority group or person or book.

Aside from the values thinking matter, what our Master Practitioner graduates should also recognize is the difference between inductive and deductive thinking. Inductive thinking allows one to make connections and associations between pieces of information seemingly unrelated and thus observe the big picture. Deductive thinking allows one to notice smaller and smaller distinctions, thus often losing sight of the big picture. Both are useful, but as a whole, our society is capable mostly of deductive thinking to the point to which this type of thinking becomes elevated almost to the status of sainthood.

Back to the issues raised by these three articles. Reading them you may notice the necessity for both types of thinking to be present to allow one to make correct and independent choices. And ultimately that’s what counts. Being affected negatively in any way because you made a choice based on a blind belief without questioning and inquiring critically won’t make you feel any better.

But even so there is yet another implicit danger, and these articles do a fairly good job of outlining it: a grand “truth” most everybody believed is being severely challenged. What are the consequences of this “truth” being accepted and believed unthinkingly by millions of people?

One line from the Age of Autism article (8/18) stuck with me in regard to all our talk about thinking and it has to do with how diseases and disorders are labeled and defined.

“There is no definitive test for autism. The criteria for diagnosis are a menu of behaviors. Therefore, we are looking at a wide net which includes all sorts of brain and neurological damage.”

*Bold Face added.

In conclusion, there is no replacement for critical individual thinking. The issue of personal choice, ultimately based on correct critical thinking is irreplaceable.

Until next time, be well.