If you restrict your conceptions to materialistic casualty, assuming your thoughts are the last link in a chain of complex gland secretions that occur behind your skull and eyes, and nothing further... they you truly are lost. But if you hold to the metaphysical viewpoint (a branch of philosophy concerned with abstract thought on subjects such as existence, causality, and ultimate truth), then we may go further here. Each judgment of a fact is reduced or enlarged by rationalizations, or what we want to believe as true, this is the filter we use. In probing further, we must ask why this is so. What psychological motivators are at work within us when the naturalistic viewpoint is temporarily suspended for the teleological principle of causation (the philosophical doctrine that states causes, design, and purpose exist in nature)? Is there a "something" pressing in on your "free-will"? How does your mind then find a way to be truly open? Why is the term “open-minded” always exclusively used to encourage people to consider worldly materialistic dogma? In today's climate, shouldn't it be the other way around? After a confrontation with perceptions of understanding that have contrary and weighty evidential credibility, if your way of thinking reveals what seems a fatal philosophical defect, what then? Could it be that your naturalist, materialist viewpoints are incorrect or at best insufficient? Be open-minded and think.

Are we as humans created with the innate need to be gregarious (-tending to associate with others of one's kind) creatures? On such issues, when finding yourself in an argument with another, it is best to avoid the most prevailing logical fallacy (-which is simply a common term in philosophy that denotes an illogical starting point for a belief) known as the ad-hominem logical fallacy. The ad-hominem (-appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect) logical fallacy is “speaking against the person,” or when you counterattack by focusing on the person alone instead of the meritoriousness of the argument itself. This is an easy trap for us all to fall into. Along with this highly seductive lure, there is yet another. When we defensively hold arguments that codify our own sensitiveness by excusing ourselves from legitimate criticisms in pointing out the other person is guilty of the same, it always seems to turn out somewhat differently than what one anticipates from a tacit exclusionary censure (-a judgment involving condemnation). What's really going on? There is always something we hide, even from ourselves. Any train of thought always loses its credentials in a particular state of affairs if even vaguely nonsocial imagery invades our thinking. We must always think of others. This is the discomforting humanistic truth on which the attribution to healthful reality rightfully exists, despite any other way of thinking that claims to be an insight. It seems to me that an unsymmetrical act of copulation with opposing abstract conceptual thought survives here only to suspend "reason" altogether. Never find yourself married to an unhealthy idea. Never avoid asking, and then answering the hard questions of yourself. And right behind every question lies yet another. This process is unending, and for good reason. It keeps us thinking. And this is not a peculiar state of affairs, it is the way we were created and thus must be.

I would like at the moment to briefly examine why some are motivated to prefer explanatory observances by virtue of “conspiracy theories.” The logic used by conspiracy theorists is based on the principle of “cui bono” (who benefits). When an event occurs, the theorist asks “who benefited from this event?” The explanations that then follow are usually a hidden person or group caused the event through some hidden conspiracy. The most obvious logical fallacy here is that it's derived from innumeracy – which is naivety about statistics and probability. We sometimes fall prey to our basic human instinctual desire for order and meaning imposed on patterns we see instead of believing an occurrence is a statistical fluke or random event. The next logical fallacy noticeable is the confusion between correlation and causation. In other words, we sometimes prefer to think that all correlations are real and not coincidence. We have to remember that even when we establish that a correlation is real, there may be myriad explanations of causation. (ie: we see what appears to be chem-trails in the sky and since some bozo on the street told me it's true, then it must be, clearly). Another logical fallacy with conspiracy theories is that they employ post-hoc reasoning, which is to use formally invalid logic by invoking arguments only after we know they're needed to construct crudely creative colloquial conclusions. This is why I disregard conspiracy theories as it is an intellectual category of splendid irrelevance.

It may be rightly said that the more pride we have, the more we hate to see it in others. Why is that? This answer offers more than just an interesting commentary on human moral psychology. What then occurs when we camouflage our pride with rationalizations and lengthy explanations or excuses? Is not the process of rationalizing starting out with conclusions and then finding which arguments can best be used defending it? In contrast, the cognitive process of reasoning tends to focus on the process moving forward where the postulation flows from the logic, not the other way around. This is an important contradistinction for us all to notice here – if you want to graduate into being a veritable critical thinker, you must embrace change despite its initial discomfort. Change is the one thing we all fear. Maybe that's the knowledge no one wants to risk having.. Never be afraid of the challenge offered by a fresh argument. Remember to suppress your reactions to the temporary emotional dissonance caused by the interaction of new data with old false assumptions. Remember that arguments themselves are not true or false; their conclusions are true or false... and each position is dependent on the soundness of logic and reasoning.

Our belief in hope is ultimately the determinative element deciding which course we are about to undertake in our journey in life that begins anew today. What I believe is most important here is that today, the now in which we live, the now in which we need to understand should not be unnoticed as a starting point for extraordinary greatness and personal achievement. What are you willing to do today to make a difference? If we remain alone unto ourselves, what hope could we possibly have in ever making any difference or changing anything about our world? What is the very meaning of asking questions such as these? Do you prefer to find energetic inspiration? Great! Keep going and growing and knowing. But if you prefer more and more sophisticated excuses and rationalizations for why you can't (or better yet, won't) do more with your life, then I think we all know this well in one sense that you suffer from a kind of oppression... a sort of self-inflicted, uncomprehending form of deep trouble symptomatic of another kind of boundless and unnecessary torment. Just ask yourself this one question: Why is it that nobody ever wants to closely analyze the life and "wisdom" of an underachiever? Never try to live your life on purpose without passion.

In the not too distant past, I made excuses for why I was not doing more with my life. Then I came to the realization that excuses are tools of incompetence used to build monuments of nothingness. And those who specialize in excuses seldom become anything and will never become successful.

It may be said that we as people overall exhibit poor self control. Most fail to overcome a bad habit, for example, by conscious effort alone as it takes too much vigilance and mental effort. So how can we possibly feel justified that we've ever done the best we could with our lives? Our brains are pliable however. All it takes is time to ingrain new habits. So what is it we lack then? Patience? The discordant divergence I am submitting here which is inconsistent with claims to common views of truthfulness and self-recognition is simply that our ordinary ways of thinking are not the most useful, but exist entirely as an aid to the practice of rationalizing. As a rogue philosopher I realize that when we fly off into speculation with verbal disputes on such matters, it is no longer achieving the goal of critical thinking. The purpose of an argument for a critical thinker is not to win but rather to value the question, the process of developing arguments that support conclusions, and nothing further. Some people may insist the very attempt is absurd, and their self-reassurance turns out to be one more excuse for mental laziness. I do recognize I can offer nothing more than assertions though, as there is no proof that there are proofs. Aside from every towering speculation which I now condemn, the truth is – we can change. For those who helplessly argue people never really do change, for them I point out that nothing at present opposes the absence of ignorance greater than this.

Doesn't it seem interesting that we feel as if we're a self-contained entity apart from the universe, occupying bodies, yet only existing somewhere behind the eyes? Even further, aside from the complexity of the neural networks in the brain that give muscle feedback to our intentions, there lies subconscious motor control. Sometimes we're not conscious of what we're doing. What is consciousness anyway? Just the confabulation of complex neural networks firing off electrical charges all running in perfectly smooth harmony? Or is there something more going on? (I am clearly avoiding issues of religion and spirituality here, just seeking to stimulate thoughts on explanations of consciousness) I pose these arbitrary questions to my readers to elicit far more than a chin scratching response. Really think about this. What do you believe is true? Is it different from what you want to believe it true? Since it is the frontal lobe portion of our brains that controls social behavior, and we know that alcohol, for example, disrupts normal functioning in this area of the brain, why mess with it? When consuming alcohol, the common result is that judgment and the ability to inhibit our behavior decreases significantly... so why the need to eliminate our critical thinking skills? Hmmm...... Just some random brain candy.

We realize in social psychology the term data mining refers to the process of sifting through large sums of data and looking for apparent patterns – and we also realize the inherent cognitive difficulties therein since this process all too easily lends itself to finding illusory patterns. In other words, you find what you want to see. I recently met someone who voraciously clung to the idea that astrology was a true and correct method of finding clues to ones future based on our earthly viewpoint of distant celestial objects in the cosmos. I am only too well aware that those who practice this pseudo-religion are prone to suppose the existence of more order than we find, and it does not follow that rational thought exists here. Even when it can be demonstrably proven that human behavioral interactions are not modified by random events in our night sky as a conspiracy of the unknown gods to either punish or reward us, these types still find themselves convinced. Sooner or later you must admit a reason that exists on its own for why you wishfully believe in such stupidity when you understand that even if credentialed thought is valid here it seems to me much more philosophical in nature than practical. And of course, philosophy is the no-man's-land between religion and science which is subject to attack from both sides. You must here at once consider seriously whether your self-generated repulsion with truth and accuracy is rational or not. This brings me to my next point. Since one clever and simple way to overthrow someone's faith in astrology is to point out that no two spiritual interpretations of star maps equally co-exist (different newspapers that still print this nonsense will have completely different “readings” for the same signs)... would not this same line of reasoning exist for other desperate attempts to connect with the unknown? Why is there such an innate need for people to connect with that which they cannot see?

Changing the world on purpose. Who, upon awakening, thinks on such things? It might indeed be too great a shock to our perceptions of reality to pull into light these discomforting conceptions that are permanently incalculable from the standpoint that nobody truly professes truth in this regard. We all at times delude ourselves into thinking we're good people at the expense of another. Does not this personal bias borderline on egotism, pride, arrogance, and the evil way? What a clever deception this truly is. If truth avoidance really represents the way our minds work during self-examination, then a true reflection of the image staring back in our mirrors seems to me to involve the same difficulty, though in a much less obvious form, as one might find in an illogical relation between beliefs and assertions of false truths. Cast inside this very general inference, I therefore turn willingly to other ground. I see nothing more than futility in progressing an argument that destroys its own credentials. We are especially familiar of our argument in defense of ourselves, as so many of us willingly lead lives of lies.

During a methodological elucidation of mental processes, and without introducing too many opportunities for distortions and errors, why do we too often voluntarily grant attention bias to unexplainable outside forces that hold responsibility for shaping our behaviors? I propose in the strictest sense which I am giving that nefarious, self-serving, illusory constructs of the mind like to temporarily suspend reality out of a simple desire to avoid pain, and nothing further. We do all recognize that pain may come to us in many disguised forms though. I think that the desire for mental constancy and congruency causes our individual perceptions of reality to appear to us stable and accurate with what we want to believe as true. There may of course be perceptual reversals that place us in positions to at once notice the obvious, but we rarely seem to want to correct ourselves or gently allow anyone else the pleasure of correcting us. This of course begs the next question: Why do we take such pleasure in correcting others while ignoring ourselves? I know of no one immune to this. This simple fact is the starting point for all explanations of intentional blindness.

The human mind in the act of knowing must break sufficiently free from the hold that confirmation bias has on its search for truth. We should not merely seek out data we want to find to confirm our beliefs, as this may lead us to faulty conclusions. Since it is beliefs that ultimately control our actions, and we realize emotions mostly control our beliefs, how can we use rationale to control our emotions? Is anyone really good with this? None that I know. Only from the most remote abstract thought outside a single interlocked system of beliefs we inwardly protect does there remain anything except this: Control your mind, or it controls you. Only if you are uncommitted to the view that reason (which originates in the mind) is a comparatively recent development would you ever doubt this integral importance of interweaving what you know to be true with what you need to believe is true.

Why do some people have such a strong resistance to admitting error (other than pride, which is sometimes disguised as self-esteem or ego)? At present, a train of reasoning has no value as a means of finding truth here unless we admit the fact that conflict avoidance techniques are biological in nature, which is to say – we all try to resolve the discomfort of conflict. Now if we are agreed about that, then I go on to my next point, which is that we plainly dislike cognitive dissonance (a state of mind caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously). But if f the true answer for why you believe something has a traceable cause back to a simple desire to avoid inconsistent appearances, does this not bring you back full circle to pride? There seems to be only one possible answer here, but this as it stands is clearly untrue in all environments. Beliefs may have a cause, but to be caused is not to be proved. To be confident is not necessarily to be accurate. You can be confidently wrong. As I see it, one biologically adaptive way we resolve cognitive dissonance is through rationalizing one of the beliefs that we want to hold, which is of course nothing short of inventing reasons to believe that which we know is at least in some way false. We as people are very good at inventing reasons to justify our beliefs.

If you arrive at beliefs for largely emotional reasons, rather than employing a thorough mental analysis, you may at once sensibly distrust the actions brought about by this decision. Unrestrained emotions, in their purest form, are nothing short of basic sensory acts of the mind. Tools of thinking use very special sorts of actions that cannot be true or false on their own. So why fear the process? I will stop far short of offering what professes to be a full account of our mental behavior and just leave off with this: It is impossible to draw every possible supposition from the thinkers point of view considering that emotions essentially make quick decisions for us that are mostly adaptive (from a biological point of view) and do, at times, override what many consider to be common sense. We know the emotions of fear, lust, hunger, anxiety, disgust, happiness, and sadness.... for example. We experience the “invisible” emotion of fear, and then act upon it. Using your will to override your emotions helps them from becoming the one unbalanced force that guides your life. Of course, the act of knowing this has with it various conditions, not the least of which is the recognition of personal responsibility. The one thing we all actively seek to avoid.

The Earth spins in rotation over 1,000 miles per hour (at the equator). It hurls through space at 67,000 miles per hour in its orbit around the sun. Earth travels in space 600 million miles around the sun during one year. The sun, to which the Earth is gravitationally bound, travels through the Milky Way Galaxy at 483,000 miles per hour. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. Think about that for a minute. Ok, now our gigantic galaxy is also moving through space at 900,000 miles per hour. We are never standing still. Surely we can merge a little bit of physics (the study of physical reality) with our life philosophies. Nothing in space ever stands still, so neither should we. Always be moving. Always be growing. Always want knowing. Be aware. Feel alive. Live your life. It's the only one you have. And you're the only one in the whole universe. You are special and unique. Remember these things.

Why do some people try so hard to insulate their beliefs from refutation? We all have a limited fund of knowledge and perspective, so why not test what we claim to believe as truth? Why be so afraid? It is important to be humble, we must all remember this. We also, at times, must find comfort in uncertainty. There are some things we do not know or cannot know, even after reviewing all evidence at hand... and we need to be ok with that.

Skepticism, unlike criticism or doubt, is a positive set of methods for examining reality. We should always fearlessly compare our ideas to external, objective data... that is unless of course we worry our views may be incorrect. Our goal should be to reach conclusions that are true, not just ones we wish were true. Humans are subject to delusions, which is to say we sometimes create our own reality - outside of what is really there. A common manifestation of this may be seen in public panic. It is correct that not all reasoning is valid, but you still must take responsibility for your own thoughts. Thinking critically is a process, and the first inherent component is examining all facts you assume are true.

You must always be cognizant that there are certain difficulties which arise as a consequence of misunderstanding others. If you seek nothing more than to avoid simple feelings of hesitation which may be expressed as a result of the relation of cause and effect between knowing what's right and doing what's right by others (despite that this has always been clearly known to you in its undisguised form), and unless your subsequent assumptions about others are nothing short of repercussions from of a refusal to interlock basic natures, then surely you realize an outright state of delusion will yet again present itself before you today. Yes, you may indeed find yourself living a mistaken and confused existence on purpose. While the gates to understanding others may be barred at times, to purposefully misunderstand is just an ongoing discharge of mental discontinuity, popularly treated as stupidity. If you will try to at least reduce your influence to such a humble level as to avoid guilt by association, you may find relations between what is - at base level - a necessary product of the reality you desperately seek to avoid. If in the end you think reasoning to be true, whether it had a simple predetermination solely by what is known or not, then you should never trespass on another person.

This single total reality we all live in has produced the framework of space and time. The continual procession of systematic events which fill our time are the inevitable results of previous choices - some choices of course made by others, some by us. Are we all not steering our lives through the procession of space and time primarily by our responses to decisions - most of which are made by others? If we know this in advance, should we not try to actively influence the decisions of others considering it impacts us as well? Can we really change our future? What I mean to get at is this: Every day, we change... and so does everyone else. So it is of crucial importance to avoid movements in an indeterminate fashion. I must admittedly infer from evidence that a feeling of certainty here seems to involve a difficulty that these two systems of connection do not truly exist. Everyone seemingly defers to cause and effect without taking any responsibility. But if you CAN make a difference, why wouldn't you at least try? So I ask today, what are you going to be doing with your spaces? What are you doing with your time?

Now it will be noticed that if my theory about the philosophy of understanding others is true, it would indeed be too great a shock to our senses to learn that some people really mean what they're saying. Or better yet, in its most general form which I cannot perfectly predict, all possible knowledge for me depends on the potency of my inductions - which are of course nothing less than inferences of a generalized conclusion from particular instances. If I am wrong, then it follows that I have no reasons to think my beliefs are true about anything else either. When I looked at others and considered the malignity of despair, the range of want, and the general misplacement of crucial priorities, I found more words than I could possibly speak to express my views. However, I find it difficult today to grow, outside of asking myself the hard questions. For example: How would a successful person perform my next task at hand?

When self-examining your life, you may if you like, give up all pretense to deceitfulness... but why try? Upon deeper reflection, this question almost answers itself. You should not fearfully ask, "who am I, really?" In the first place, we can only constructively recombine otherwise unrelated ideas into an amalgamation of fresh hope if we are brutally honest with ourselves. What does it mean to ask the hard questions? Are you willing and able to ask the hard questions of yourself? Do you really want to know? Do you really want to grow?

What predictably happens in its own accord when trying to understand someone else's needs is that opposing viewpoints will most assuredly collide. In the present instance, it seems especially gratuitous (uncalled for in current circumstances) to restrict the realities of overly apparent explanatory attributions to understand the world (attribution theory is a concept in social psychology referring to how individuals explain causes of behavior and events). I believe it is only when you are asked to believe in reason that this may even be brought up. But in the end, it will be said we do reach truths by inferences, surely. If the value of my reasoning is in doubt, (ie: show me proof that there are no non-proofs - which is of course nonsensical), then you may give up all claim to truth. I only seek to build a bridge in order to avoid a deadlock of ideology.

An enormous plethora of quantitative estimates have been carried out with regard to new business development concepts. How to establish and run a successful enterprise should not be as limited in scope as countervailing viewpoints suggest. So why then is there always a problem? I don't think we should make any large claims about our progress in business until we have undergone the kind of scrutiny invigorating polemics so cheerfully provide. But we should also avoid analysis paralysis.