Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye (LeGault, 2006)

"[For] those concerned about America losing touch with its intellectual traditions . . . Think! could not have emerged at a better time."
-- The Washington Times

Product Description
Outraged by the downward spiral of intellect and culture, Michael LeGault offers the flip side of Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling phenomenon, Blink, which theorized that our best decision-making is done on impulse, without factual knowledge or critical analysis. If bestselling books are advising us to not think, LeGault argues, it comes as no surprise that sharp, incisive reasoning has become a lost art in the daily life of people everywhere.

Somewhere along the line, the Age of Reason morphed into the Age of Emotion; this systemic erosion is costing time, money, jobs, and lives in the twenty-first century, leading to less fulfilment and growing dysfunction. LeGault provides a bold, controversial, and objective analysis of the causes and solutions for some of the biggest problems facing Western culture in the 21st century. From the over- load of reality TV shows and gossip magazines that have rendered curiosity of the mind and spirit obsolete to permissive parenting and low standards that have caused an academic crisis among our children, LeGault looks at all aspects of modern lives and points to how and where it all went wrong.

p.5 Sharp, incisive clever thinking is steadily becoming a lost art, more and more the domain of specialists and gurus... Is America losing its ability to think?

p.27 Faulty thinking is a result of two distinct but interwoven factors - the inability to think critically and a lack of will to think clearly.

p.29 We have become a society in which the first instinct is not to think clearly, it is the protection of one's backside.

p.29, 30 Emotion and subjectivity, not critical thinking, have become the overwhelmingly popular method of evaluating our world and making decisions.

p.35 Critical thinking is critical because it avoids jumping to conclusions. It holds judgment at bay until all the evidence is in; indeed one of its objectives is to obtain all the evidence needed to prove or disprove a hunch.

p.36 The challenge we face is not producing thoughts, it is producing useful thoughts. These are thoughts that are capable of analyzing the formidable but fascinating complexity of the world in order to guide actions to yield the most appropriate or best result.

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