Our minds are an open highway for thoughts, serving a variety of concepts, ideas, dreams and opinions. We continuously process a massive spectrum of thoughts that form the foundation of our perspectives. The thought process however is not serialised in nature, and is intrinsically irregular, with a plethora of thoughts time-sharing the analogical CPU, i.e., the brain.More often than not, we think about a lot of topics, for instance, globalisation, immigration, dataism, artificial intelligence, the effect of social media etc, in a very chaotic manner, which mirrors the inherent nature of our thought process. This lack of organisation and due diligence around examining and contemplating these topics leads to us forming opinions in our brain that lack a solid and stable basis, rendering a lot of us not having strong opinions about a lot of these important topics that define our current world and also effect the the future. Why do we not have strong opinions? Simply because we didn’t spend time contemplating about these things. One important observation, to which I concede, is that these topics are not trivial and require a great deal of thought, research and experience in order to form valid opinion.
For the determined, forming opinions is second nature, primarily due to their honest interest in their topic of interest and the associated due diligence , but for the majority who harvest a mild, and yet genuine, interest, and struggle at forming valid arguments based on strong opinions, I have a strategy.To think about any topic, however complex, revert back to a technique taught in childhood- draw out a page, write down your topic as a heading, and begin pouring out your thoughts, concretely and consciously on that piece of paper. This facilitates concentration on a single topic, and also an opportunity to go on a tangent and research about what you don’t know, without interrupting the chain of thought since it’s all penned down.Writing stuff on paper isn’t as easy as processing a thought;it is permanent, a tangible proof of your thoughts that you cannot deny, and hence carries, intrinsically, a responsibility on the writer to ensure the validity and accuracy of the content, and more importantly the writer’s belief in it. So, the next time you want to form an opinion, take a piece of paper, wood or digital, and scribble down your thoughts.
Comments