you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]ZvezdaRussian 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

It does suck, there is not much we can do about general human idiocy but at least there are still a few people capable of using their minds around.

What do you think a person like me or you can do to maintain our ability to critically think? My British friend was telling me about how he visited a university there and he could feel his IQ drop a few points as he saw all of the women with ridiculously coloured hair and heard conversations about the finer points of anarchism 😆 Also, how could I get people to critically think about things? I have a friend from my childhood who is staying at my place currently and he has always been quite an angry person. I am trying to think of ways to get him to think about why he feels a certain way towards things and I am attempting to get him to think about why he makes decisions in a better more clear way in his mind. Any ideas?

[–]NodeThis is my flair. There are many like it, but this one is mine. 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

What do you think a person like me or you can do to maintain our ability to critically think?

There are probably some specific practices one could follow, but I'm guessing one would be to stop paying attention to the incredible retardation that appears to be overtaking our species. I'm not doing it, but I think isolating oneself into a subset of reality might allow some critical thinking.

As for your friend, what specifically is he angry about? Therapists have techniques to draw out answers from people with anger or other problem emotions. I don't think I can describe in a comment how to go about that without potentially 'setting him off' in an angry episode. You kind of have to elicit some of that emotion to access the reason he's holding on to the anger.

You could just ask why he's so angry. To maintain rapport, assuming you have it, repeat whatever he says back to him, as follows.

"Dudebro, I hear you saying you're angry because [insert the exact words he used here]. Is that right?"

It's kind of a delicate process to access someones highly emotional state. I don't think I'm able to tell you in a comment how to help your friend be less angry and make better decisions. I guess being as sympathetic as you can be, while evaluating his answers and non-verbal responses might be an approach.

[–]ZvezdaRussian 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thanks for the advice :)

May I ask, how old are you?

[–]NodeThis is my flair. There are many like it, but this one is mine. 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

As the kids would say, old af. If I hadn't already turned away from society 20 years ago, and had chosen to be a wage slave instead, I could retire this year.