Sermons by Rev. Don W. Vaughn-Foerster
Emotionalized Thinking
Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
April 15, 2007
"Thinking" can be a tedious thing. To sit quietly, studiously, to explore a problem facing us when need for action is not immediately apparent is, sometimes, a trying occupation. Most of us had rather be up and about doing something. But, "thinking" is one of the most precious abilities we possess. The ability to find a solution for our practical problems and mental quandaries by "thinking them out" (by inquiring into them) instead of having to work them out by trial and error is, perhaps, what seems to distinguish us from other animals. I say "seems" because porpoises, chimpanzees, and my dog Dewey may do more of this than I can tell.
We, human beings, would not be what we are nor have the great potential we do have without this ability. This morning I want to remind us all again of this fact about ourselves. Given our socialized acceptance of authority, as well as our all too human resistance to change, we need to encourage ourselves to renewed effort in the systematic use of our minds. After all, this is, perhaps, the primary tool we have in the pursuit of freedom in our religion.
Perhaps I should begin by admitting that much of what I have to say may seem obvious to the point of triteness. It seemed so to me when I began work on this sermon in earnest. Most of us have been exposed (if not overexposed) to theories and techniques dealing with thinking and communicating. I had to study these things in depth in college where I was a communications major ("speech major" in those days) and as a salesman where my income was directly related to the words I used and the way I used them. It certainly used to be a perennial topic in Unitarian Universalist churches.
I almost decided to talk about something else in order not to speak about things we already all know and agree on. But, then, I remembered some of the many conversations and discussions I have participated in here and in other UU circles, and I realized that, if we do already know these things and agree on them, we often do not practice them very well. I have been in many discussions designed to explore an idea or a problem and to compare interpretations or possible solutions which quickly became debates and, sometimes, harangues in which the effort was to "persuade" one another before ever there was a common understanding of what the assumptions and the facts were in the first place. Even with our high level of education as a group, we can be a very opinionated (and, therefore, logically unreliable) people. To my own dismay and despite my supposed "specialized" training, my own performance, sometimes, has left something to be desired. So, simple though this subject matter may be, we all need to deal with it from time to time.
Actually, we ought never to tire of paying attention to the dynamics of our ability to think. It is, after all, of fundamental importance to us religious liberals who look on ourselves as free and independent beings whose first and greatest obligation is to our own consciences. We feel, or say we feel, as did the author of one of my long-neglected college textbooks, that "the story of man's (sic) education, maturation, and development might be written in terms of his (sic) efforts to develop increasingly intellectual patterns of behavior." [Ewbank and Auer, Discussion and Debate, p. 43, Edition II.] Furthermore, we would add to these words that such intellectual activity must necessarily be free, untrammeled activity if it is to attain its highest promise. Thus, unfettered thinking (free inquiry) is at the very root of our self-understanding as religious liberals.
Before going on, perhaps, I should explain what I mean by "thinking" and "inquiry". There is a great deal that passes for thinking which, in fact, is not. Thinking is not unlimited expression of biases, prejudices, or impulses, although the First Amendment of the Constitution gives us the right to besiege each other with such things. Thinking in its best sense is ordered intellectual activity. It proceeds along such lines as those described early in the twentieth century by John Dewey. If it works, it always has an empirical element about it which brings the intellect to bear on what confronts us in the real world. According to Dewey, when we think, we first become aware of a problem or issue, then locate and define the problem or issue, then look about for suggested solutions or outcomes (which we then proceed to explore), and, finally, by observation and experiment, we accept or reject the suggested solutions or outcomes as true or useful, according to the criteria for decision we have set up. Boiled down, this merely says we determine what a situation is before we ask why it is, and we ask both what and why before we decide what can be done. Only then, do we choose what can be concluded or what ought to be done or thought - the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland to the contrary not withstanding.
When, as individuals or as a group, we do these things in this order, we are behaving intellectually. We, then, are actually thinking, not knee-jerking or fantasizing. When we get them mixed up or do not do them at all, we are doing something else and calling it reason. There may be something to the old injunction that, at some point, "we have to stop reasoning in order to find a reason'", as a Fundamentalist preacher in my youth used to say. But, this is in the realm of revelation - and revelation is something with which some seem more gifted (or addicted to) than others. This short-circuiting of our minds is also what we do when we seek an assumption that will provide grounding for our prior conclusions. Sentence before verdict, so to speak.
It goes without saying that the thinking process works best when outside distortion is kept to a minimum. But, here is where we encounter difficulties. Too often there is more distortion at work than orderly thought. Sometimes we are just not up to the exercise. We are quite like the Unitarian Universalist who said, "I can't talk about that now. The left side of my brain doesn't kick in until my second cup of coffee"-or until I have already decided what I want. But, besides our natural swings between grogginess and alertness and our reluctance to change our minds, there are other forces that are always ready to hamper the proper use of our intellect and to suppress free inquiry. A couple of examples: There is the powerful inertia pull, the blind status-quo-ism, of orthodoxy and habit. "Things have always been this way!" we are told. Or, "Unless you can satisfy the dogma (be it scientific, religious, or political), you cannot be correct," we again are told. There is, also, the equally powerful "blanking-out" process of censorship which, relying on social and legal disapproval, places taboos on that with which our minds may deal. We have Orthodoxy to tell us what to think and how to discuss it; we have Censorship to tell us what not to think or discuss. People of all sorts develop these things and foist them on one another. We Unitarian Universalists do, too.
But also, along with these two forces, there is a greater inhibitor of the free exercise of the intellect. This is the individual's own penchant for non-logical (or disorderly and emotionalized) thinking. When this is at work, although we tell ourselves that we are "reasoning through" a thing, we may actually be letting our minds wander in haphazard fashion. Any flash of insight we have while doing this is likely to come because of the chance workings of our mental meanderings and not because of orderly thinking.
The predominant way in which most people express their non-logical thinking is by coloring everything with emotions. When this happens, the head and the heart can tell the mouth to say some strange things. We human beings usually are motivated to solve problems or understand ideas not because of our interest in "pure" intellectual activity, but because solving problems and understanding ideas are necessary to satisfying our wants and desires. Basically, what interests us are such things as: preservation of our physical well-being; success in our joys and interests; recognition; approval; the respect of others; being loved; having security and release from worry; and adding some zest to living. Most of our so-called thinking is conducted on these terms and, therefore, on an emotional level.
There is a positive, beneficial side to this, or course. Sometimes the melding of the head and the heart is the essence of creativity. Poets experience it. Artists have a mixture of emotion and thinking that makes them artists. More prosaic people do, also. That's what makes really good scientists, inventors, scholastics, mothers and fathers and friends, and thinkers of all kinds. It's the negative mix that keeps people from fulfilling their highest potential.
What is it that we do negatively when we do it emotionally rather than rationally? We do a number of things. First of all, we rationalize a lot. You know what "rationalizing" is. That's when we "ration" our thoughts only to those that will defend a conclusion upon which we have already decided. That is, we use supposedly rational arguments to justify our non-rational beliefs and desires. We try to live up to William Jennings Bryan's observation that "It is a poor mind that can't fix up good reasons for doing what it wants to do!" Secondly, and akin to rationalization, we confuse desire and conviction. We tend to believe what we wish to believe. We say: "We like to do right; we do what we like; ergo, what we do must be right." The result: instead of having some objective criteria that an idea is valid or a course of action is correct, we only desire that it be correct. Too often Unitarian Universalists build their religion like this. They say, "Here, I can believe what I want to believe" when what the responsible use of free inquiry enables us to do is to believe what we must - to believe what our consciences insist is true - not what our guts, jerking knees, or funny-bones desire to be true.
Thirdly, emotionalized thinking makes us suggestible. Being in an emotional state makes us intellectually passive and gullible. After all, to doubt something we are told requires a good deal of intellectual effort. If we are not thinking carefully and systematically, we should not be surprised that we easily believe almost anything we are told. Especially when, and this is a fourth thing we do when we think emotionally rather than rationally, someone makes a personal appeal, flattering us by personal attention instead of persuading us by logic, or yelling at us to overpower our resistance. Sometimes the person speaking may not know much but says it so loudly that we give that person more credibility than is deserved. As I was told in preaching class, when you have a weak point, pound the pulpit and wave the Bible!
The final two things emotionalized thinking causes us to do: We accept specious arguments - arguments having the false look of truth. Here, since our minds are not at work, reliable logic does not seem relevant. And, we ignore intellectual appeals because we are, then, only open to emotional communication. To continue to do these things and call it rationality is, actually, to live with our main tool for understanding life disconnected.
Out in the world, most thinking intended to be rational, logical thought is actually thinking of this sort. Instead of reflecting non-judgmentally, most people simply pluck out a conclusion from their mental store of biases, desires, inhibitions, notions, stereotypes, and ideologies. What is true of general humanity does not leave us untouched, either. Religious liberals, also, fall into the same traps - even despite our usually high level of education. We give much lip-service to the principle of free inquiry and to the rationality it requires, but we are as subject to non-logical argument (to rationalizations, suggestion, personal appeals, specious arguments, and so forth) as anyone. We, too, want to defend our un-thought-out conclusions. Further, not infrequently, we set up our (implied) dogmas, we censor each other according to our personal and local taboos, and we allow our discussions to degenerate into occasions to vent our prejudices or to proselytize for our private ideologies. We, too, can skip the what and why questions of rational thinking and deal mostly with what can be done, what ought to be done, and what do I want done - usually focusing on the latter. All too often, we, like other people, could sum up our contributions to group thinking like the lawyer who summed up his argument to the jury with this slip: "These, then, ladies and gentlemen, are the conclusions upon which I base my facts!"
If there is anything that bothers me about overemphasis on spirituality, it is when it focuses us away from the responsible pursuit of intellectually valid free inquiry. I like the poetry of life -- the metaphors, the sense of mystery, the warmth and security of acknowledging that there is a larger reality than I can verbalize - as much as anyone. But I came out of a religious system that so focused on such things that the full use of the mind was stifled. I had to fight my way out of a morass of warm, fuzzy- -- and even inhumane -- assumptions that saw an honestly free inquiry into life as a threat. My experience has convinced me that we must be very careful about that to which we become emotionally committed. It seems to me that the more we rely on emotionally implanted behavior - which, too often, habit and liturgy can promote - the less reliable our own rationality becomes. I had to struggle with my family, friends, and community at large in order to find my own mind. Frankly, I see some of that same morass of religious froth and fuzz forming in our Association -- in more secular and liberal terms, of course, but of the same mind-stultifying effect.
If we are conscientious persons seriously seeking to honor free inquiry as one of the basic tools of our religion, we have to be clear about our allegiance to the principle of free inquiry and put it into actual practice. Free belief requires faithful, constructive use of the intellect. In other words, when we say we are being rational, we ought not to be satisfied with random thinking, authority-conditioned thinking, emotionalized thinking, or any other brand of non-rational "mentalizing". There is too much at stake in taking our own responsibility for what we believe to allow it to be otherwise. No one who would truly trust his or her conscience would allow anything to pass as intellectual activity which does not meet rigorous standards of careful, systematic thought.
Our growth and maturity require that we make free, intensive, and disciplined use of our intellects. Yes, we need to be emotionally accepting and supportive of one another. We need to be emotionally committed to the principles that mean the most to us. But, to find these principles and keep them viable, we need to be steadfast in our veneration of rationality and persistent in our use of it. So necessary is this that success or failure, both of our personal religion and our church, rests squarely upon the quality of thinking which conditions our encounters with one another. If we can be open, honest, orderly, and effective, then we are being what we represent ourselves to be - truly committed to freedom in thought and accepting of one another. If we can actually "see" what is before us and clearly and accurately report it to one another without negative emotional filters, we will be doing what this religious setting was designed to enable us to do. If we fail in this, we fail throughout. May the desire for free inquiry so permeate our congregation and ourselves that we become truly effective, communicative, and yet independent persons encountering and accepting one another in an intellectually sound spirit of free inquiry. May we be people whose head and heart cooperate so as to move the mouth to speak clearly and soundly.