I read this quote by Thomas Merton this morning and really liked it.Is there any vestige of truth left in our declaration that we think for ourselves? Or do we even trouble to declare this any more? Perhaps the man who says he “thinks for himself” is simply one who does not think at all; because he has no fully articulate thoughts, he thinks he has his own incommunicable ideas. Or thinks that, if he once set his mind to it, he could have his own thoughts. But he just has not got around to doing this. I wonder if “democracies” are made up entirely of people who “think for themselves” in the sense of going around with blank minds which they imagine they could fill with their own thoughts if need be.A few months ago I critiqued a book on this blog by Susan Jacoby called The Age of American Unreason. My assertion was that the author’s idea that Americans’ use of common language was a signal that Americans were getting dumber. For Jacoby, there seemed to be a correlation between the use of the word “folks” and the corporate IQ of the nation. I found that absurd.
Well, the need has been desperately urgent, not for one year or ten, but for fifty, sixty, seventy, a hundred years. If, when thought is needed, nobody does any thinking, if everyone assumes that someone else is thinking, then it is clear that no one is thinking either for himself or for anybody else. Instead of thought, there is a vast, inhuman void full of words, formulas, slogans, declarations, echoes – ideologies! You can always reach out and help yourself to some of them. You don’t even have to reach at all. Appropriate echoes already rise up in your mind – they are “yours.” You realize of course that these are not yet “thoughts.” Yet we “think” these formulas, with which the void in our hearts is provisionally entertained, can for the time being “take the place of thoughts” – while the computers make decisions for us.
So it may seem like a reversal now that I quote Merton saying the same sort of thing here. The thing is, when I first picked up Jacoby, I expected her to be onto something. I sensed, for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, that America is getting dumber. I’ve sensed this for some time. It just seems like we are not a society of thinkers. Certainly not deep thinkers. I don’t have any real evidence to prove this suspicion. And I further suspect that if I were a better thinker I would have the capacity to identify some examples and articulate my point. But I think no one thinks. I suspect that less than half of the people I know generate original, critical thought on any regular basis (if you’re my friend and you’re reading this please assume you’re in the thoughtful minority).
But my duplicity is justified, I think, and not just because I have a lot more invested in Merton’s writings than in Jacoby’s, because I think Merton’s point is less about education and more about contemplation. Our Sunday school class this week was about margin – how in our finances and schedules we Americans have come to live without margin – without any room for error or rest. We heard Andy Stanley teach that good relationships happen in the margins, and I would assert that original thought happens there too. I don’t have time to think critically about things when I’m running from one meeting to the next.
And our whole society is like that because we’ve come to equate busy-ness with significance. If you’re an important person, you must be busy. I wonder if all of the important people in our government are too busy to think and “letting the computers make decisions.” I can’t imagine how my clients would react if I gave them an invoice with a line charge for “thinking time.”
And as I write these words, I’m running late so I have to stop. I suspect that there is more to think about here, but I don’t have time for it.
