Shakespeare’s Hamlet is often quoted “To be or not to be?” This one of life’s existential questions. Scott Peck is of the opinion that another question gets to the heart of how we interpret our existence. He paraphrases Shakespeare to ask “To think or not to think?”
This is the question to ask when we have to consider whether we should pay attention to analyse and measure the quality of our thinking with the purpose of increasing its quality. He writes that if we don’t think about our thinking in this way, we do simplistic thinking where we make some common errors such as:
- simply not thinking why we do specific things
- making assumptions in thinking through the use of one-dimension logic
- stereotyping and labeling others
- assuming that thinking well and communicating with flair is not hard work; especially at first
- Simply viewing thinking about how we think is a waste of time
- not learning to be thoughtful rather than just randomly thinking.
Simplistic thinking put roadblocks in the pathway of our movement toward living with contentment, fulfilment and optimal success. It prevents us from developing our potential and reaching satisfying outcomes for the challenges we experience.
