It's a sad truth that most people in the world are non-critical thinkers. By non-critical thinkers here I mean non-philosopher type; those who aren't interested in understanding about life, the human nature, etc.
Something happened at my home this morning that I thought I could use as an example of how non-critical thinkers are good at creating problems in their (and other people's) lives without having the ability to realize that they are doing so. By the way, the non-critical thinker in this case is my mom!
So yes, in our residential society there's this garbage man who cleans the building premises, staircases, etc, and collects garbage from every house every morning. He collects garbage simultaneously while cleaning the stairs and the floor around the doors. To optimize his time, what he does is ring a doorbell and goes back to the cleaning job; because obviously no one opens the door right at the moment the doorbell rings. And if he waited at each door, say, on average 30 seconds, then for collecting waste from four doors he would, on average, be wasting two minutes (30 seconds X 4 homes). Two minutes, by the way, is also the average time he takes to clean the entire area of one particular floor. (Time figures are taken for the example such that it makes the explanation simple.) Yes, so what he does is this. He would ring a doorbell and get back to continue his work. And when the door opens he would take the waste bin and empty in into the big waste bucket he slides along with him.
Now looking closer into his working. Since it's his every day job, after many days of experience he would get used to the whole timing thing. For example, he knows that on average it takes 30 seconds for our door to open; also, it is best for him if our door opens when he has cleaned a certain area of the floor, after which he has to change the direction and angle from which he sweeps his broom. (It's like his task is divided into parts, and it's better if the task is interrupted after the completion of parts than at any random moment.) So, he would ring a bell at the time such that till the door opens he has completed that part of the task which I mentioned. For that's optimizing his time and efforts and gives him highest efficiency. (Of course, since there are four doors the actual efficiency management job is more complex, but it is achieved by this very process which I stated in a simplified form.)
Continuing the scenario, since he has to (or he is determined to) maintain his efficiency thus achieved, if my mom takes less than average time to open the door, she won't find him at the door when she opens it, and therefore will have to wait a few seconds till he completes the part (that I stated above) of the task and comes to collect waste. If, on the other hand, on some day my mom takes a few seconds more than the average time to open the door then he would have had to wait a few seconds, causing him a loss of efficiency. If this "deviation" from the average time to open the door is little (and of course, little deviations naturally happen everyday but that's fine), there isn't a problem. But if the deviations are large, i.e., the amount of time taken to open the door increases far more than the average time it takes, and if that is repeated day after day then it is understandable that the garbage man isn't going to like it; and he would have to work out his "most efficient strategy" of time management all anew!
That's what happened today. Actually, since last two days I have changed my morning routine somewhat and so the time of my having lunch has shifted. Consequently, the time of mom's cooking has shifted, to coincide with when the garbage man usually comes. A day before yesterday when the doorbell rang, my mom was cooking and so it took her far more than average time to open the door. About 1 minute, which is double of the average time. I was eating my lunch (Yes, I already start eating while the food is cooking, and it arrives into my plate in installments!) and getting restless while mom was stuck with the chapati she had to finish before rushing for the door. When the door opened, the man, as expected, was waiting at the door. Again yesterday the same thing happened. This time around the man grumbled something at mom out of displeasure. Seeing it, this thought flashed through my mind: "From tomorrow this poor man should ring the doorbell a minute in advance so that he doesn't have to wait long like this." Ringing the doorbell by taking the average time as 1 minute (instead of 30 seconds) he could make the completion of his that part of the task and the opening of our door coincide again.
This morning, surprisingly, I think, that's what he did. But sadly, when the doorbell rang, mom was free and she took hardly 5 seconds to open the door carrying a waste bag. And then – and this is the proof that he had recalculated the time – she had to wait for about 55 seconds till he came to the door. (If he hadn't recalculated the time, mom would have had to wait only 25 seconds.) At this, mom got real angry at him for keeping her waiting at the door for almost a minute while she had other things to do! This time around he was prepared with a verbal attack of his own. And you imagined right what happened. A squabble followed. Not going into the immaterial details, but at the end of the fight none of the parties, obviously, were pleased. (I hope there's no after-effects of this event to be faced in the future.)
What I gathered from this? I think it was unreasonable of my mom to get angry at him. Here's why: Since for past two days she (or I should say "we") had been spoiling the poor man's time management, today he came with a correction in his time management strategy, which was only right and rational on his part; but because of our varying deviations from the average time to open the door, things didn't go as they should have and mom got "punished". If we look at it justly, she got punished for what she did in the past two days. She deviated from the usual pattern, for two days in a row, which forced the man to reformulate his plans, and she deviates again today and gets punished. Twice the man got punished (about 30 seconds each time), and once mom did (55 seconds). On the whole it had got automatically even.
If mom was a critical thinker she would have seen this whole thing through and applied the necessary corrections in the following days instead of getting unnecessarily angry at the man. If I was in my mom's place, I would, in the following days, simply open the door taking less then average time and the man would automatically adapt his plans to match both our time. After that all I had to do is avoid large deviations from the average time, and in any case not repeat it, which is only fair. I think this understanding is necessary.
One has to know the human nature, and understand and respect everybody's desire and tendency to act for one's wellbeing, which in this case was the efficiency the man got through his time management. As long as possible, we should try to cooperate with each other in achieving that state which is most advantageous for everyone.
But ah, who thinks so much! Aren't you also wondering why I am making such big deal out of an incidence which no one looks into this closely? (Well, I just thought there was some lesson in it.) What mom thinks is that it's alright to make him wait at the door, after all it's his job; but how could he ring the doorbell and then not be there when the door is opened! Yes, she's got a point. But look what happened when she acted on that point.
In the world there arise myriad types of problems where critical thinking can be used to the common advantage. This example was far from excellent or comprehensive, I know. (Rather a clumsy one.) The incidence, however, shows an important point: There are so many cases happening in life where problems and miseries are caused because people don't understand life well. Humans don't understand other humans. Neither do I understand everything perfectly, but perfection is never the point. The more we understand life and the human nature, the smoother our transactions get.
Philosophers and critical-thinkers see life much more closely than ordinary people do. They see things not seen by others. And so their actions are often likely to be more efficient and yielding in terms of human well being. I am not saying that all philosophers and critical thinkers use their best judgement in every situation; but they certainly have the ability to act in a much more amicable way than the ordinary people who don't understand life. This is true especially of the thinkers who have well developed ethical and moral sense, which by the way is a function of critical thinking. Hence, we need more people to be interested in philosophy and critical thinking and, in general, understanding life.
Related post(s):
Something happened at my home this morning that I thought I could use as an example of how non-critical thinkers are good at creating problems in their (and other people's) lives without having the ability to realize that they are doing so. By the way, the non-critical thinker in this case is my mom!
So yes, in our residential society there's this garbage man who cleans the building premises, staircases, etc, and collects garbage from every house every morning. He collects garbage simultaneously while cleaning the stairs and the floor around the doors. To optimize his time, what he does is ring a doorbell and goes back to the cleaning job; because obviously no one opens the door right at the moment the doorbell rings. And if he waited at each door, say, on average 30 seconds, then for collecting waste from four doors he would, on average, be wasting two minutes (30 seconds X 4 homes). Two minutes, by the way, is also the average time he takes to clean the entire area of one particular floor. (Time figures are taken for the example such that it makes the explanation simple.) Yes, so what he does is this. He would ring a doorbell and get back to continue his work. And when the door opens he would take the waste bin and empty in into the big waste bucket he slides along with him.
Now looking closer into his working. Since it's his every day job, after many days of experience he would get used to the whole timing thing. For example, he knows that on average it takes 30 seconds for our door to open; also, it is best for him if our door opens when he has cleaned a certain area of the floor, after which he has to change the direction and angle from which he sweeps his broom. (It's like his task is divided into parts, and it's better if the task is interrupted after the completion of parts than at any random moment.) So, he would ring a bell at the time such that till the door opens he has completed that part of the task which I mentioned. For that's optimizing his time and efforts and gives him highest efficiency. (Of course, since there are four doors the actual efficiency management job is more complex, but it is achieved by this very process which I stated in a simplified form.)
Continuing the scenario, since he has to (or he is determined to) maintain his efficiency thus achieved, if my mom takes less than average time to open the door, she won't find him at the door when she opens it, and therefore will have to wait a few seconds till he completes the part (that I stated above) of the task and comes to collect waste. If, on the other hand, on some day my mom takes a few seconds more than the average time to open the door then he would have had to wait a few seconds, causing him a loss of efficiency. If this "deviation" from the average time to open the door is little (and of course, little deviations naturally happen everyday but that's fine), there isn't a problem. But if the deviations are large, i.e., the amount of time taken to open the door increases far more than the average time it takes, and if that is repeated day after day then it is understandable that the garbage man isn't going to like it; and he would have to work out his "most efficient strategy" of time management all anew!
That's what happened today. Actually, since last two days I have changed my morning routine somewhat and so the time of my having lunch has shifted. Consequently, the time of mom's cooking has shifted, to coincide with when the garbage man usually comes. A day before yesterday when the doorbell rang, my mom was cooking and so it took her far more than average time to open the door. About 1 minute, which is double of the average time. I was eating my lunch (Yes, I already start eating while the food is cooking, and it arrives into my plate in installments!) and getting restless while mom was stuck with the chapati she had to finish before rushing for the door. When the door opened, the man, as expected, was waiting at the door. Again yesterday the same thing happened. This time around the man grumbled something at mom out of displeasure. Seeing it, this thought flashed through my mind: "From tomorrow this poor man should ring the doorbell a minute in advance so that he doesn't have to wait long like this." Ringing the doorbell by taking the average time as 1 minute (instead of 30 seconds) he could make the completion of his that part of the task and the opening of our door coincide again.
This morning, surprisingly, I think, that's what he did. But sadly, when the doorbell rang, mom was free and she took hardly 5 seconds to open the door carrying a waste bag. And then – and this is the proof that he had recalculated the time – she had to wait for about 55 seconds till he came to the door. (If he hadn't recalculated the time, mom would have had to wait only 25 seconds.) At this, mom got real angry at him for keeping her waiting at the door for almost a minute while she had other things to do! This time around he was prepared with a verbal attack of his own. And you imagined right what happened. A squabble followed. Not going into the immaterial details, but at the end of the fight none of the parties, obviously, were pleased. (I hope there's no after-effects of this event to be faced in the future.)
What I gathered from this? I think it was unreasonable of my mom to get angry at him. Here's why: Since for past two days she (or I should say "we") had been spoiling the poor man's time management, today he came with a correction in his time management strategy, which was only right and rational on his part; but because of our varying deviations from the average time to open the door, things didn't go as they should have and mom got "punished". If we look at it justly, she got punished for what she did in the past two days. She deviated from the usual pattern, for two days in a row, which forced the man to reformulate his plans, and she deviates again today and gets punished. Twice the man got punished (about 30 seconds each time), and once mom did (55 seconds). On the whole it had got automatically even.
If mom was a critical thinker she would have seen this whole thing through and applied the necessary corrections in the following days instead of getting unnecessarily angry at the man. If I was in my mom's place, I would, in the following days, simply open the door taking less then average time and the man would automatically adapt his plans to match both our time. After that all I had to do is avoid large deviations from the average time, and in any case not repeat it, which is only fair. I think this understanding is necessary.
One has to know the human nature, and understand and respect everybody's desire and tendency to act for one's wellbeing, which in this case was the efficiency the man got through his time management. As long as possible, we should try to cooperate with each other in achieving that state which is most advantageous for everyone.
But ah, who thinks so much! Aren't you also wondering why I am making such big deal out of an incidence which no one looks into this closely? (Well, I just thought there was some lesson in it.) What mom thinks is that it's alright to make him wait at the door, after all it's his job; but how could he ring the doorbell and then not be there when the door is opened! Yes, she's got a point. But look what happened when she acted on that point.
In the world there arise myriad types of problems where critical thinking can be used to the common advantage. This example was far from excellent or comprehensive, I know. (Rather a clumsy one.) The incidence, however, shows an important point: There are so many cases happening in life where problems and miseries are caused because people don't understand life well. Humans don't understand other humans. Neither do I understand everything perfectly, but perfection is never the point. The more we understand life and the human nature, the smoother our transactions get.
Philosophers and critical-thinkers see life much more closely than ordinary people do. They see things not seen by others. And so their actions are often likely to be more efficient and yielding in terms of human well being. I am not saying that all philosophers and critical thinkers use their best judgement in every situation; but they certainly have the ability to act in a much more amicable way than the ordinary people who don't understand life. This is true especially of the thinkers who have well developed ethical and moral sense, which by the way is a function of critical thinking. Hence, we need more people to be interested in philosophy and critical thinking and, in general, understanding life.
Related post(s):
0 Comment(s):
Post a Comment
Please preview and double-check your comment before posting. Use proper formatting, i.e. do not use all caps or all small letters, no short forms like cud, dnt, lyk, b4 etc., use right punctuation,.. or the comment won't be approved. View full comment policy.