General description
People almost never think. It can be surprising, but that’s the truth. All they do is thoughtlessly (often even without using elementary logic or common sense) grinding and chewing thought or parts of thought which they’ve heard somewhere before. Their opinions and points of view often contradict to each other, but they try to take no notice of it, to force it out of mind, to forget about it, finding some sort of comfort in that. We finally have to learn how to think. What for? Well, just because it gives a lot of pleasure. And also because common sense and ability to make logical deductions help to make our lives more enjoyable, more comfortable and more interesting.
You can read the whole concept of the courses and ideas of Selection of Attractive States at “Our concept”.
Specific skills you will learn
In this course you will engage in discussion of controversial topics and learn how to stay reasonable, and create informed opinion.
You will also learn how to:
- objectively assess your qualities
- assess your psychological age
- grow your qualities without stressing yourself
- identify negative beliefs of yourself and dispose of them
- collect facts and create opinions effectively
- throw away mental rubbish that everyone have plenty of
- learn with pleasure
- constructively accept approval
- make sense of politics, finally
- derive pleasure from intellectual activity
Course outline
Day 1.
Theoretical aspects:
Groundless opinion (belief, dogma) and its difference from reasoned judgment.
Evolutionary value of dogmatism as a necessary step before transition to common sense. Withdrawal of dogmatism from under moral categories, a constructive attitude to dogmatism in yourself and others.
Mechanisms of adopting beliefs.
Effect of beliefs on joyful wishes suppression and on destruction of activity and life richness.
Beliefs as an instrument to suppress personality at all levels of society – I myself, the state, religion, family (husband-wife, parents-children), work etc.
Clarity as a source of energy and life intensity, as a growing environment for joyful wishes and personal development.
Reasoning and grounds to form an opinion.
Fundamental changeability of grounded opinion in contrast to beliefs. Freedom brought by this changeability.
Methods to conduct a reasoned conversation.
Indications that you have a belief.
Freedom of “I don’t know” position in the absence of opinions.
The role of self-importance in supporting beliefs.
Practical skills:
Training to say “I need to think” and “I don’t know” in case you have no opinion.
Training to conduct reasoned conversation without changing the theme or psychological pressure or other tricks of black rhetoric.
Training to identify black rhetoric, psychological pressure and imposing any beliefs by your interlocutor while discussing opinions.
Developing skills of questioning the grounds of your interlocutor’s opinion.
Day 2.
Theoretical aspects:
Sources of arguments and their reliability. The scale of reliability.
Biased sources in specific countries or communities and characteristic features of the bias.
Influence of beliefs on negative emotions and negative background formation and support.
Beliefs and their danger to life and health.
General ideas about false images and extrusions and their huge destructive role.
Practical skills:
Enhanced training to say “I need to think” and “I don’t know” when others make fun of you.
Making a list of sources and evaluating their reliability.
Training to evaluate arguments using sources.
How to look for beliefs and find a reliable source to analyze a belief.
Other methods to manage beliefs.
Analysis how a particular belief affects various spheres of life.
Training to publicly change your opinion on some important issue and to control negative emotions.
Simple experiment on debunking false images and extrusions.
Day 3.
Theoretical aspects:
Parasite words controlling our lives (“should”, “worthy”, “bad”, etc.)
Intellectual pleasure.
The difference between Clarity and belief replacement.
Establishing the boundaries of your competence.
The curse of analogies.
Practical skills:
Training to find parasite words in other people’s thoughts on the example of any article on the Internet.
Listing “pros” and “cons” when making decisions.
Making a tree of arguments and counter-arguments when forming opinions.
Training to change your opinion in public (using your account in social networks and in personal communication) and constructive opposition to mockery in this regard.
Training to communicate using the method of «beliefs – anti-beliefs».
Training to develop definitions of simple words and complex concepts.
Gaining experience in replacing words with terms in a specific thought. Observation of the change in perception of this thought and its influence on yourself.
Training to publicly establish the boundaries of your competence.
Exercises in reasoned rejection of “reasoning” via analogies.