What is Preventing Our Clear Thinking?

We know the importance of thinking clearly for achieving success in our life and enjoying a happy life.  All good and evil, all our joys and sufferings are due to our thoughts as William Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

A person with clear thinking sees the world “as it is” and knows the “real world” while a person lacking this ability sees “conceptual world” based on his “concepts”. These concepts are not reality but like an image or colored lenses which prevent us seeing the reality clearly.  It is like seeing a white cloth with a green color lenses. You do not see the white cloth but see “red cloth”.

When we see the world, we see it using our perception, understanding, images which has become so deeply interwoven in our minds that they have become our  “commonsense” and we do not even realize that we are making a mistake. If it is external lenses, we can perhaps remove it to see clearly but the commonsense is so much ingrained within our mind due to the conditioning of our minds since childhood that it is very difficult to get rid of it. Einstein said rightly said, "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

The Reality of Distorted Vision

Let us try to understand our inability to think clearly by an example.

You are a CEO of a company and you are going to appoint a person for your Sales Department in your office. The person who is being called for the interview is named Mr Ram Sevak Pandey, from Bihar (India) with a Bachelor of Science from Delhi University (India). We have yet to meet person but we have already formed the image of the person based on the images we have developed in our mind since our childhood. Let us analyze these images one by one

1.       Name: “Ram Sevak” is a name which is quite ancient (Hindi) meaning “Servant of (Lord) Rama”. The name perhaps gives you a feeling of his rural/traditional back ground.

2.       Surname: “Pandey” is surname belonging to “Brahmin caste”, which is on the top of the caste hierarchy.  The image of the caste is different in the mind of different people. For Brahmins, he may be one of them while for lower caste people; he may be an exploiter of their people for thousands of years. For some people, the caste is elite as represents intellectual bent of mind while others may be indifferent to the caste.

3.       Religion: The name indicate the religion of the person as “Hindu” and you may have a typical image of people of Hindu religion like orthodox, idolater, corrupt, unprincipled, flexible depending upon your experience of life or the experience of others/media. Your image also depends on your own religion and the relationship of your religion with Hindu religion.

4.       Country: One who knows “India” has an image of the country which is based on the limited information about the country based on the media reports or personal experiences of friends. This image is different in every person. If you are Indian, it may be positive and if you are from an Islamic country, it could be a great negative.

5.       Region: While those who are not familiar with the intricacy of India may pay no attention to the region “Bihar”, but those who know the place have an image of Bihar. It is different if you are a “Bihari” (Resident of Bihar) and different if you are an outsider. It depends on your personal experience with a person of Bihar origin.

6.       Qualification: You may have an image of the students of B. Sc. And hence their suitability for the present job. The image may be based on the observation of just one person or purely on heresy and even on hypothesis based on your like/dislike of science as a subject.

7.       University: We have all images of the university based on the knowledge available to us. For example, we may consider Harvard University graduate smarter than Delhi University. It also depends on our image of the place Delhi and our experience of the students of Delhi University.

The Distorted Image

We all have the tendency to judge the person based on our images rather than judging the person who he or she is. In this case, we are seeing the person from multiple images (Name)(Surname)(Religion)(Country)(Region)(Qualification)(University). We are hardly able to see the real person.

The worst part is that we are not even aware that we are not seeing the reality and judging the person based on our prejudices/images. So even before we meet the person, we view the person from our images. Naturally, this image is quite incorrect which we realize when the person appears for the interview. He does not look, dress, speak or walk like what we imagined. Still instead of changing our image, we often try to change the reality of the person to fit into our image. So if we do not like the person based on our image and consider him to be unsuitable for the job, we ask more difficult questions to him as compared to one whom we have thought to be the right candidate.

There is an unconscious attempt to validate our preconceived image of the person and prove that we were right in our perception. We are more likely to ask difficult questions from the person whom we don’t like as the candidate would fail to answer these questions and our image is validated. We “desire” (unconsciously) to reject the person as we have already rejected him based on his image.

Once in a while the candidate may turn out to be too smart and we are forced to change our image. Yet the more he proves us wrong, the higher we raise the bar till such time the person fails and we are proven right.

Seeing the Reality

It is not easy to break all the images we have gathered in our life and see the reality as it is. Yet the very knowledge of the existence of these images in our minds and its effect on “clear thinking” can help us in correcting the defect. We must challenge the images in our mind by by gathering more “facts” and by proper reasoning and logic. Only when we are free from all images, we can develop the vision to see the reality and develop clear thinking.