The Importance of Thinking Twice

 The Importance of Thinking Twice

We live in a reactionary world. That’s simply the way it is now. Someone says something or does something and around the world people React. They get quite fervent in their reactions and the reaction builds and then suddenly it becomes a Thing. But I do wonder how many of these Things would not develop in the way they do at all if people just stopped and thought twice.

Because it isn’t the first thought you have that matters. It’s the second.

The great Sir Terry Pratchett has beaten me to this insight, of course, in his Tiffany Aching books. But I shall do my best to clumsily articulate it all the same. Our first reaction to anything is instinct. It’s born of our culture, our upbringing, our influences, our religion, even deep, primal emotions – it’s the thought that comes without even thinking about it. So, for example, if you grew up in a time when or a place where, for example, homosexuality was considered unacceptable then one’s first instinctive reaction to a gay kiss on TV might be –oh, that’s not right, I don’t agree with them showing that, or some such.

But here’s the crunch. While I know there are people who automatically disagree with me on this – we’ll get to that – I maintain that first thought isn’t what matters. What matters is how you react to having that thought. What matters is what you think second.

Because if your second thought is to double down, to continue feeling disgusted and objecting to someone living their life in a manner that doesn’t hurt you in any way, because that’s what your cultural, social or primal instinct tells you, bluntly, you are choosing to be prejudiced. You are choosing to accept that instinct as a fact of your life and to re-enforce it. You are choosing to remain in your narrow cultural and temporal horizon.

But if your second thought is to say – no, that’s not right, it’s none of my business how they live and love and it doesn’t affect me so why should I care? I’m going to try not to think like that - then you are choosing not to accept that instinctive thought. You are choosing to consider and analyse what’s happening for yourself and not simply follow the path your instinct has taken you down. You are choosing to be more accepting of others. You’ve taken control of your own thinking and looked at it critically. You’ve chosen to think more broadly.

And I feel that is vital to everyone as we simply can’t help our first, instinctive thoughts. They were instilled in most of us before we even knew what instilling was, as small impressionable children. There is very little we can do about them other than choose to confront, examine and where needed, push them away. But herein lies another problem – the reactions of others.

Because, honestly, part of the problem out there is the instinctive reaction of other people not to forgive the first thought. They condemn someone for not immediately understanding that culture, that viewpoint, that lifestyle automatically, in spite of that person making an effort to understand – and in doing so, they are reenforcing that person’s first instinctive prejudice. For if a person tries to be better and is met with sympathy and understanding, they will know they made the right decision and carry on fighting their instincts. But if they are condemned for that first thought and for not having an inbuilt instinct not to think like that – and few do – it pushes them away, back into the arms of the first thought not to like it, as trying to resist it becomes unwelcoming and hard. It makes being better too much effort.

Because we have to allow people to change. We have to allow people to think. We have to allow people to broaden their horizons and learn to understand each other. Otherwise, what hope is there for any of us, or even for the world? If we condemn everyone for their first thoughts, we condemn most of the human race. But if we encourage other people to think better, we can change us all for the better as well.

And maybe, just maybe, a world where people learn to accept and understand each other for what they are and judge people as individuals and not by their ethnic, social or cultural group might not feel as impossible as it does right now. Maybe we might even become a true human race after all.

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