Don't Expect to Be Spoon-Fed

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers.

Three months in, a listener asked where the how-to instructions were. Answering that question would have sabotaged the whole point.

In this episode
A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 8 of Eli's aphorisms, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. from great minds, a "What If?" to ponder.

Eli’s Aphorisms
“When you're driving the herd, it's a good idea once in a while to look over your shoulder to see if the herd is still there.”
“Never interrupt your competitor or enemy when he's making a mistake.”
“There are six frogs on a log. Five decide to jump off. How many are left? Six — because deciding to do something and actually doing it are two different things altogether.”
“Not one step of progress of humans on this planet has ever been made within anyone's comfort zone.”
“Critical thinking is all about the future, but many of its lessons are found in the past.”
“Don't expect to be spoon-fed, because then you wouldn't be thinking independently or constructively.”
“The real measure of success is not in the data. It's in my inbox.”
“We wanted a place where curiosity mattered more than certainty.”

From Great Minds
“A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

What If?
The Columbian Exchange — the potato, tobacco, and chocolate going east, chocolate once valued above gold and hoarded by kings and queens; the horse, steel, guns, germs, and Christianity coming west, remaking warfare, economies, and the art of two continents. Columbus matters not because he discovered a place where indigenous people had lived for thousands of years, but because he facilitated the exchange. What if he had veered off on one of his three voyages looking for India and never arrived here at all?

This episode is supported by Bergen Volunteers.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. More at eliamdur.com.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:07

This is Vantage Point, the podcast for critical thinkers, where we make sense of and excel in our lives, our jobs, and our world. We're not political, just critical. Thanks for joining each week as we continue in our campaign to revive critical thinking. I'm your host, Ellie Amder. Happy to have you with us. And today we'll veer a bit from what we do and drift over to a discussion of why and how we do it. Remember, our mission is to fight the decline of critical thinking and to encourage the return of good, strong thinking. One of the things I've done is to rely on and look forward to critical feedback, which is just what we not only need, but we should want. Over the three months since our first episode dropped, we've received many positive responses, replies, and reactions to what we've done. Not just little emails or texts, but serious, lengthy comments, paragraphs containing validating phrases such as strong intellectual DNA, worthwhile theme, the host has credibility, both academic and professional, and leaves me thinking, well, after the podcast is over. Let me tell you, after spending a lifetime, and I'm now I've entered my eighth decade on this planet, a lifetime trying to build my own critical thinking and that of thousands of others in the classrooms, both in public school and at the graduate level. These comments are extremely gratifying. But it's not enough. Because while these strongly validate what we're doing, here's one worth its weight in gold in a different way. Said the listener. Great description of 10 critical thinking methods, which you can find in episode one. But where are the how-to instructions? What should the next step be for managers, parents, and others who are helping to shape the minds of yet another generation? What's the how-to? And that's precisely one of the main points here. Were I to comply and answer that question, those questions, I'd be sabotaging the push towards critical thinking. Independent critical thinking in the first place. It's like the guy who says to his boss, say you want some creative thinking around here. What are the guidelines? Sorry. No. So don't expect to be spoon-fed because then you wouldn't be thinking independently or constructively. I will, however, lean heavily on what we know as effective human learning mechanisms. And I will push to use the widest variety of them as possible. For instance, human beings learn through stories. And we're the only species that does. It's how we grew up. Mommy and Daddy read us books, they sat us on their laps. They read us stories. And later, we did that by ourselves. In that light, I've already told a very poignant story about Nicholas Copernicus in episode five, and another very good one about Sandy Colfax last week in episode nine. Yes, that's Sandy Colfax. Now then, I think I should share a few things that I've learned with you. And here's what I've learned so far by launching this podcast. One, the world has no shortage of podcasts, and certainly doesn't need just another voice in an already crowded room. And that's just it. I wasn't trying to create just another podcast. Instead, I wanted to create a place where challenging, even difficult questions could be explored without ideological slogans, where curiosity mattered more than certainty, and where people left each episode thinking a little different than when they arrived. Listener response told us we did that and are doing that. Two, the valuable lessons we learn come in many different packages: stories, experiences, mistakes, independent thought, parallel thinking, puzzles, paradoxes, see exits, episode six, and the ever-critical what if question, and so on. That's why the episodes take so many different shapes. We just have to recognize them as such. Three, we've gotten some very encouraging data analytics telling us who and how many people are listening to our podcast. But the real measure of success is not in the data, it's in my inbox. Almost immediately after launch, listeners began sending thoughtful messages, not quick compliments, but long emails describing how an episode had challenged an assumption, changed the way they approached a difficult decision, or helped them rethink a career transition. Some agreed with my conclusions, others expanded on ideas that had only been briefly mentioned during the conversations, but nearly all of them had one thing in common. They had continued thinking long after the episode ended, and that was always the objective. Critical thinking is all about the future, but many of its lessons are found in the past. For instance, we easily yield to inertia, what we already know, better known as your comfort zone. Not one step of progress of humans on this planet has ever been made within anyone's comfort zone. As the old saying goes, behold the turtle who gets nowhere until it sticks its neck out. Case in point, and a great case study. It took roughly a thousand years to emerge from the Dark Ages into what we know as the Renaissance in the 15th century. The good news is that a chap in Ireland, whom we now know as Saint Patrick, saw the Dark Ages coming and did something, something absolutely monumental, monumental about it, a millennium ahead of time. I refer you to Thomas Cahill's fabulous book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, but this great story told by an even greater storyteller. I wasn't going to tell you anything about the story, but I decided against that and to give you just a little teaser. But in the fourth century and into the fifth century, Patrick saw the decline of any kind of enlightenment and saw all history and culture endangered. He recruited hundreds of monks and got them together to transcribe and copy every book or record that had ever been kept and store them away for posterity's sake. Good thing he did. Read Cahill's book. Here's the point. Patrick and others did not ask what the aforementioned listener asked about what are the how-tos. Using one or more of the ten most well-known critical thinking techniques and approaches, they solved the problem and took advantage of the opportunity. Now, you can find those ten in my first episode of Vantage Point, The Critical Decline of Critical Thinking. And if you'd like to find it easy, easily enough, please go to www.leamdur.com, E-L-I-A-M-D-U-R.com. And while you're there, please check out and support our generous sponsors, to whom we are grateful. With these lessons learned, our mission proceeds. And that's the story for today. Got some aphorisms coming up, got some what-ifs coming up, got some great minds to share with you coming up. But right now, we'd like to take a break and highlight one of our generous sponsors. Be right back. It's answered every day about 10 miles from where I sit. Here's a word from our sponsor, Bergen Volunteers. Vantage Point is brought to you by Bergen Volunteers. Since 1966, they have been quietly at work in Bergen County, neighbors helping neighbors across 70 towns. They mentor kids who need someone in their corner, and they help seniors stay independent at home. And through Bergen Leeds, they have trained hundreds of people to lead in their own communities. Nobody that waits for the perfect plan. They see what a town needs and they go and do it. They call that critical thinking with the sleeves rolled up, and that is exactly right. To everyone at Bergen Volunteers, thank you for supporting this show and thank you for the work you do. And you can learn more about them at BergenVolunteers.org. We're back. I'm back. Everybody's back. I'd like to share some aphorisms with you and remind you that these are my thoughts. These are aphorisms that I've put together after 57 years of a career in learning what life and work is all about. I'm not going to defend them. I'm an aphorist. I'm convinced I'm right. Take them or leave them. But these this is the way I see the world. Aphorism number one today. When you're driving the herd, it's a good idea once in a while to look over your shoulder to see if the herd is still there. Aphorism number two. Never interrupt your competitor or enemy when he's making a mistake. Number three begins with a question. There are six frogs on a log. Five decide to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log? One? No. Six. They're still all there because deciding to do something and actually doing it are two different things altogether. When you're making decisions about action, remember the six frogs on the log. I want to offer a thought from a great mind, one of the great minds in American history and writing, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who said, a mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension. That's what you call getting out of your comfort zone and loving it. And they're going to finish up today's episode with a very, very big thought about one of the biggest events in world history. And that event is the Columbian Exchange. That event is what has happened ever since Columbus journeyed across the Atlantic and came upon the New World. There's a lot of skeptical writing about Columbus that he didn't really take the route that he said he took. Some say that he didn't even take the journey that he made it up. Some say he copied ideas from Marco Polo. But it's pretty much established that he did do all this. Now we get into the difficulty of dealing with colonialism. But under it all, the Colombian exchange, those things that went back and forth because Columbus came here cannot be denied or minimized. As a result of the Colombian exchange, the potato, tobacco, and chocolate showed up in Europe, each with enormous value. Chocolate, for instance, was valued at a level greater than gold. Kings and queens hoarded it. Tobacco instantly addicted Europeans and changed lives. And the potato, one of the staples of the world, with fifty some odd varieties grown in Peru alone. The way we eat, the way we recreate, the way we garnish. All because of the Colombian Exchange. What went what what came this way? What came from Europe? The horse, which gave tremendous edge in warfare, steel, another advantage, guns, complete superiority, and germs. It's pretty well documented that many people in South America and the islands in the Caribbean were first infected with the germs that the Europeans brought over, and when they were weakened, they were conquered by the Europeans yielding their their power through guns. And finally, and bigger than all, what the Europeans brought here was Christianity. Do a little research on your own and look at the art of South America and Mexico. In the 1600s, the 1700s, the 1800s, and forward and a dramatic transition that took place once Christianity took hold of the dominance of these countries as a of two continents. What if Columbus didn't facilitate these exchanges? What if he came here, showed up, conquered a few indigenous people, and then went home and retired? Columbus is not just important because he quote unquote discovered America. He did not discover that the indigenous people were living here for thousands of years. He's important because he facilitated, and those who followed him facilitated the exchange of things not only that influence lifestyle like tobacco and chocolate. He changed economies, he changed life. So the what is is very simple. What if he didn't do it? What if he actually veered on his trip, trips, three trips, looking for India, which is what he thought he found, and never showed up here on this continent to begin with. Not gonna answer those. Think about it. And while you're doing that, please accept my thanks for being with us again. Enjoyed talking to you. Coming up in the next couple weeks, I'm gonna talk to you about two of the most important people of the entire 20th century. Both in the field of medical science. I'm gonna talk to you about, I'm gonna tell you a story that I've told many times called Ascending Everest. The story of conquering Mount Everest. And next week I'm gonna tell you a great story that didn't occur in Everest, but occurred right here in New Jersey. It's called The Power of the Positive Word. So a lot of good stuff coming up. Thanks again for being with us. I'm Ellie Amder. Talk to you next time. Until then, keep questioning, keep learning, and keep thinking critically.