here pasted in its totality is a collection of 'thoughts about thinking';

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.” Albert Einstein

Information that is consistent with our existing attitude is understood
and processed easily. Our mind needs consistency so information that is inconsistent with our existing mental picture gets overlooked, distorted, or rationalized to fit existing thinking. The investigator should try to disprove, rather than prove, each of the alternatives. One key to identifying the kinds of information that are potentially most valuable is to ask yourself what it is that could make you change your mind. This simple tactic would do much to avoid surprises.

"Don't confuse me with the facts. My mind is made up!"

Some choose their opinions based upon what they wish to believe rather than as a result of exploration. As in, my friend thinks like this or my father always thought that. What we think of as accurate evidence for our viewpoint often depends more upon prejudice than facts. We take in information and process it according to our personal biases. It becomes: I know this issue. I have studied it. I have a personal involvement with the issue therefore I know it well. It is worth no more than any other option, but the psychology of "owning" the issue makes us value it more. Information that is consistent with our existing thinking is perceived and processed easily.  If you decide to respect someone or believe something you can not doubt yourself even when contrary evidence appears.

Why do we do the things we do? How can two people, or even large groups, look at the same set of facts and come to such widely different
conclusions? Maybe even more important would be to ask why? Is there some bias involved? We have a tendency to believe what we want to believe. We seek information and draw conclusions consistent with what we want to be true. When people draw conclusions about political events, they're not just weighing the facts. Without knowing it, they're also weighing what they would feel if they came to one conclusion or another, and they often come to the conclusion that would make them feel better, no matter what the facts are.

When everyone is thinking the same no one is thinking. Groupthink is often characterized by: An inclination to study too few possibilities, lack of serious review of other's ideas, selective information gathering, no planning for possibilities and rationalization. The group has a fantasy of immunity and shared morality, true feelings and beliefs are suppressed, and censors may be chosen to protect the group from negative information. Some people repeat manufactured thoughts with no evidence of having reasoned them thru. Neither the right nor the left looks at problems without prejudice or searches for all the necessary details. I think a great deal of your viewpoint has to do with your environment. We tend to go on our emotions and most recent input. And those emotions can be influenced by the crowd we run in. That is why it is so important to read those who disagree with you. You may simply to wish to believe something is valid. We all too often find "facts" to fit our stories rather than letting our stories be dictated by the facts. It’s as if being able to disprove one of my assertions will cause the others to disappear.

Confirmation bias is the inclination of people to read material which reinforces their present views. They associate with people who agree with them and who think like them. So their biases are constantly confirmed. The antidote is to read material, and associate with people, who do not agree with your views. It is more important and profitable to learn why you are wrong than to hear why you are right. Knowing anything at all takes an investment of time and energy. People that spend their whole lives getting to know something rarely admit that the time was wasted. Once invested in an idea, a religion, a stock, or a career a man can't help but believe in it. He damns the man who questions his thinking. If he has the power to do so, he burns him at the stake.

Most want a cozy society with both security and meaning. They want a framework of known, satisfying, personal relationships where they would be surrounded by others equally satisfied and no challenge to the status quo. Then they insist that their myopic or narrow vision must be universalized.

Why is it that when someone feels insulted by you they automatically assume you intentionally chose to do so. They never, it seems, consider the possibility of misunderstandings. To be unpopular in school is to be actively persecuted. Popularity is only partially about individual attractiveness. It's more about alliances. To become more popular, you need to do things that bring you close to other popular people, and nothing brings people closer than a common enemy. Attacking an outsider makes them all insiders. If it's any consolation to the nerds, it's nothing personal because the group of kids who band together to pick on you are doing the same thing, and for the same reason, as a bunch of guys who get together and go hunting. They don't actually hate you. They just need something to chase.

Mother knew instinctively what the keepers of the castles have always known: the kind of trouble that might threaten the symmetry of a well ordered garden needs time to take root. Take away the time and you choke off the problem before it begins. Obedience reigns, the plow stays in the furrow and things proceed as they must. Which raises an uncomfortable question: Could the Church of Work which today has Americans aspir­ing to sleep deprivation the way they once aspired to a personal knowledge of God be an anti-democratic force? "There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and sav­ing it from all risk of crankiness, than business." Do we escape by saving our bodies and letting our soul and minds leap for us? Do we become among those who, as Benjamin Franklin suggested, die at 25 but aren't buried until they are 70? One might take that leap of faith towards something that protects us from the unknown. Full humanness means full fear and trembling, at least some of the waking day. When you get a person to emerge into life, away from his dependencies, his automatic safety in the cloak of someone else's power, what joy can you promise him with the burden of his aloneness?
You don't have to be a psychiatrist to confront this irregularity. I have spent my journalistic life attempting to tell people things that will help them understand what is really happening around them. Yet the closer I have come to succeeding, the more resistance I have found. For some, even asking hard questions is a suspect activity. After all I am stealing their scarecrows.

Acceptance is more useful than anger and more realistic. Anger owns you without recourse.

Watch your thoughts, they become words.

Watch your words, they become actions.

Watch your actions, they become habits.

Watch your habits, they become character.

Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.