THINK AGAIN
O you usually believe what you are told or do you immediately jump to the opposite conclusion? Do you believe what you want to. believe-that you look ten years _ younger than you are, that you resemble Greta Garbo or Gary Cooper, that your son is the most brilliant lad in the class,
or that liver pills, face cream, and the latest breakfast food, taken separately or all together will restore that school girl complexion? In these days of newspaper headlines, placard advertisements, and other forms of idea infiltration there is the risk that we not merely think what we want to think, but think also what we are told simply because there are so many devices for telling it to us again and again and again. But apart from all the little things that are percolating through and building up all sorts of minor beliefs, prejudices, and superstitions, there are the bigger things that we make up our minds about. Do we consider the facts coldly and dispassionately and logically and reject those which do not stand the test of our appraisal? Are you proud, as
Lord Selborne in 1924 said he was proud, of "the glorious incapacity for clear thought which is one of the distinguishing marks of our race?" If you do not agree that an incapacity for clear thought is glorious, if you think that muddling through is at best an expedient, you will be interested in the new Winter Course talks from 2YA by L. S. Hearnshaw, Lecturer in Philosophy at Victoria University College, which will begin on Monday, July 27, at 7.30 p.m. The opening talk is entitled "The Need to Know the Facts", and from this point the lecturer will go on to discuss such things as the danger of words, logical fallacies, pitfalls in thinking, and the prejudices which, alas, so often fill our minds. You will not find him as difficult at he sounds.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 161, 24 July 1942, Page 5
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324THINK AGAIN New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 161, 24 July 1942, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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