30 Days to Better Thinking and Better Living Through Critical Thinking: A Guide for Improving Every Aspect of Your Life, Revised and Expanded

Day Thirteen. Don’t Be Fooled by the Words People Use: Look Underneath Words to Unspoken Realities

We tend to have very little understanding of the role words play in how we experience reality. From the beginning of life, we are immersed in words, language, and ideas. For example, parents point to an object or person and say the associated word to the child—this is a chair. This is a spoon. This is Mommy, Daddy, baby, bad, good, nice, mean, ugly, pretty. With these, and many other, words we form beliefs. (“I am good.” “I have the best Mommy and Daddy.” “Some people are bad.” “These kinds of things are ugly or disgusting.”) Because of our native sociocentricity, we often form our beliefs in accordance with approval or disapproval. We tend to uncritically ...