Someone once told me that we live in an age of “dumbing down.” I think he specifically called it the “dumbing down of America.” I suspect there is some truth to that statement, at least to a degree. It’s not that people are dumb; but it’s more of a situation where we have forgotten how to think for ourselves.

This happens at all levels, form the most common of conversations on social media to the halls of academia. I vividly remember a conversation with one of my professors in college. He told me that he wasn’t concerned with originality in our work for his classes as much as he was with the ability to repeat what he had taught us. What I took from that conversation was that if I could regurgitate his notes in my work, I’d get a good grade. And I did. Along with so many others, I was obediently interested in what he told me we wanted me to learn, and not much else.

I get it. He was teaching a specific topic, and we needed to learn that subject matter. But I think I could have learned it better if thinking and exploring were more encouraged than just repeating what he said in class.

A further problem is that when we don’t think and reason about things, we substitute emotion and feelings. This is why so much is said on social media that we might never say in a physical, vocal conversation. Instead of objective conversation, we turn to subjective feelings, and we let them drive our speech.

So what do we do about it? Maybe, just maybe, we need to relearn how to think. We need to learn how to use our cognitive reasoning abilities to assess our lives and circumstances. It will be hard, because these thinking muscles haven’t been used in a while for most of us. And it will take time. But I think it might help us avoid so many of the problems that we face as a culture, and lead us out of the chaos.

If you are interested in reading How To Think, by Alan Jacobs, you can pick up a copy on Amazon.