Superficial vs. Substantive Originality; High vs Low Critique

you said about how evaluating assessing how unique you are. Uh how a person might do that about themselves. Um and uh it brings up a topic that I think is related to egoentricity and it's the emphasis on being original. Um it's something we've we often put a great deal of emphasis on. How original is this? And to me, I think originality is very important, but it's only one factor among many. Um, there was this time right around the 1900 when all these great composers were competing with one another. And one way of looking at it is that they were each trying to be original. So you had Shernburg and Verez and Mer and all of them. They're all just trying to be original as if that's a the main thing to be. Um also I also see it in movie reviews where uh one main way of criticizing a film is to say it's really the same theme has been done many times in the past and that's people say it as a negative whereas it doesn't seem that much of a negative to me. Uh the question for me is how well is it done even if it's been done a hundred times before. I mean our lives are pretty much done the same way [clears throat] over and over again with all of us who live and it's not as if uh we want to we think it's valuable to live in an entirely different way. Maybe we do think that sometimes but there's something about originality which kind of glorifies my own contribution and thus it's linked in my mind to egoentricity — the overvaluing of originality. Well, this is a very important point — and what one of the things that I think people don't realize is to be original typically first you have to do a lot of work to master what's already been done within an area. — And often original ends up just being novel, which is not interesting. just something different. — I mean, taking a toilet tissue roll and painting it a certain way can be interesting to someone, but it's mainly probably just novel. So, uh, what we see this very often, this problem that you're talking about in theoretical schools. So — uh one of the great examples of this in my mind is this take the original work of Albert Ellis. — It's sound on the whole and it's full of powerful and deep ideas. — And what happened is cognitive behavioral therapist came along later and says what said well let's just be original. Let's not really master what Albert Ellis has provided for us. And I'm not talking about all people in the field. I'm talking about one phenomenon that I see. And it's this is just one example of many that we could give. So instead of mastering what a master has developed, — they shove that aside and say, "What I really want is to sell books — and I'm going to come up with some original theory. " — And often that is watered down. It's halfbaked. It's half thought through. It's maybe sells books and makes you some money if you're the author. — And this is a very serious problem as I see it in the field of behavioral uh cognitive behavioral therapy. And I can make a parallel argument for our field of critical thinking. Mhm. — So instead of theoreticians, — serious students — coming behind us and saying, "Let let me master everything that the masters have already developed. — I'm going to take a little of this and that and then I'm gonna put it together and take say this is critical thinking. " M — and if you read the book, you find it's a hodgepodge that it will not advance fair-minded critical societies because it is a hodgepodge. — It was never intended to advance fair-minded critical societies which is the primary intent as I understand it of critical thinking that is to help us

live better. So this is a very significant problem in our field. People coming in without the background, without doing their homework — and again just taking this superficial approach. What we need is for people to master the best of what has been developed in critical thinking and build on that. And that's where the originality comes in. Building on the best that's already been figured out. — It's like somebody coming in and say, "Well, tango, that's all right, but I don't want to learn any of that. I'm going to have a new school over here. We're going to call it tango, but I'm going to have my own moves over here because I don't want to really learn all of that. And I want to have my own school, call it, you know, the Linda Elder School of Tango. " And it's just it's a it's a very significant problem in human life because we can't build upon the best work that's been done in every field and it's more of a problem in some areas than in others. — Yeah. Um yeah indeed. Um I mean this isn't part of your main point but it it fits with it in a certain sense. There was this uh series on uh HBO, I guess, on uh Game of Thrones. I'm guessing you didn't watch it, but it went on for season after season, and I kind of I I enjoyed it, and but then it was all built up in a certain way, and then this is now my analysis, the writers wanted to have an original ending. So, the person who w the whole plot was building to defeat the bad guys uh didn't defeat the bad guys. some other character was brought in to defeat the bad guys and people were in an uproar all over the world. They wrote in about how they had ruined this series and the series of books and um by by uh having this inconsequential not this relatively minor character come in and just violating the logic of the whole plot that was built up and I think it was in the name of originality. It was the idea well let's just do something different. let's do what's unexpected here. Um — and uh and sometimes that works but very but it's not in and of itself valuable. It's only valuable if it works to make things better. — Wow. — Right. And to link what we've been talking about to the problem of egoentricity. — Yeah. So in the examples I was giving the main purpose was for people to come up with their own theory — so that they could get some attention — and call themselves critical thinkers — or make themselves look better than Albert Ellis and call it cognitive behavioral therapy. and or any or come up with another name entirely and this say so the idea is I'm better than all of that I don't I'm above need to study all that I'm original I'm an original thinker that's entirely egocentric if it's done the way I'm talking about — and some sometimes it may not be as stark as that u for these kind of almost seem motives but it can be that oh here's this aspect of uh critical thinking that has been neglected uh or hasn't been talked about very much here is this aspect and then to tr and I've discovered it and now I'm going to think of that as the whole of critical thinking that all of critical thinking is centered around examining your assumptions um so you leave out all the rest of critical thinking But you focus on just on that you call that critical thinking and it is critical thinking in the sense that it's a it's an important aspect of critical [clears throat] thinking but it's not the whole of it. Um and so it may not be kind of for self- gain or uh uplifting of oneself but it can be just the the there's the finding this one area which seems to work and now I emphasize it out of all proportion to uh I don't fit it into some larger scheme that's more or less already established. Yeah. — And by the way, that's the opposite of appropriating the best ideas — saying look what so this the theoretician has added to our knowledge

— instead of saying this is a wonderful addition. — Let's focus on that addition. It's let's just throw darts at — theory and try to take it down. — Right. So taking Albert Ellis's work, one of the criticisms I think that I could make of his work if I wanted to criticize it — is to say that he didn't focus on the ethical dimension in the way that I think he could have. — But um every theoretician can't do everything. And we ask what have you added? Not what have you left out. Maybe we can emphasize what has been left out. — Maybe that's what someone can do. They can say these are all the wonderful things in the theory. Let's now add this other fair-mindedness dimension — and other tools of critical thinking — and then we're going to make the theory even more powerful. So that's being generous — to the original author, but it's also even to make that move that I've made, I have to be well read — in the theoretician's work and I have to be honest generous — to the original thinker. — Indeed. Yeah. Right. Yes. Um that was uh at least ostensibly that was a major emphasis in doing the kind of philosophy I was brought up in that when I describe the position that I'm against uh that I'm going to write against I uh have to describe it with generosity. I have to give it I have to be true to what it's saying, but also I have to always I have to give it the benefit of the doubt and not be not pick it to pieces or for small errors or weward paths or anything like that. And uh that seems one of the fine that's a very fine impulse that's not it's not to the four in all fields. um literary criticism I don't find that to be to the I don't find it four that um disparage other literary thinkers for instance — and it's a serious problem often with student thinking — yes [snorts] — they can find one if students can find one or two problems in the work well that's it this is showing this is not a good thinker — right — they can be reading someone like Bertrren Russell and they — they don't see the wealth of the work, the breadth of the work and the knowledge that goes into the work. — And often people who are critics themselves have not