Are you a leading thinker? Or just a beginner, thinking your way up the ladder of thought?

By Gary Abernathy

The notion that some are ‘thinkers’ and some aren’t is elitist in the extreme, but thinking can also be underrated

For the kids out there, Jack Benny was a well-known comedian whose radio career began in the 1930s, with his popularity spanning decades and expanding to movies and television, right up until his death in 1974 at age 80.

In addition to never admitting to being older than 39, part of his well-cultivated public persona was that of a skinflint, someone who still had the first dollar he ever made. A popular bit that he returned to time and again featured him being held up at gunpoint.

The robber would exclaim, “Your money or your life!”

Benny would famously pause for several seconds, until the exasperated robber would again demand, “Well? Your money or your life?”

Benny would finally respond, “I’m thinking it over!”

That bit comes to mind whenever I hear someone in journalism, academia or elsewhere refer to a certain class of people as “thinkers.” “Thinkers” are apparently different than the great majority of us, in that they apparently have a lot of time to kill just thinking.

New York Times columnist David Brooks was the latest I noticed using the description.

In a recent column headlined, “What I Love When I Love America,” Brooks discusses the somewhat unique attribute of the good ole USA as a place that encourages ambition. He notes, “Through most of Western history, leading thinkers regarded ambition as an unmitigated sin.”

What jumped out at me in the column was not Brooks’ overall thesis as much as his casual reference to “leading thinkers.” It is a reference that cannot be so casually skimmed over by those of us who don’t agree that there are such people.

I am not sure about the pecking order of thinkers, but apparently, if there are leading thinkers, a hierarchy must exist.

Perhaps there are “beginning thinkers,” followed by “novice thinkers,” then “minor thinkers,” on up to “average thinkers,” “competent thinkers,” “proficient thinkers,” and finally, the granddaddy of them all, “leading thinkers.”

We are all leading thinkers

To me — and this just may be my own prejudice — the notion that there are “leading thinkers” is a concept devised by “intellectuals” to justify their self-appointed station in life.

To them, there are the thinkers, and there is the rest of humanity, those of us just stumbling around blindly, bumping into walls, slipping on wet spots, drooling our way through life until the merciful day when oncoming traffic or choking on a peanut puts us out of our mindless misery.

In practice, I think everyone is a thinker and, when it comes to our own lives and those of our loved ones, just about everyone is a leading thinker.

We may not all sit in our private studies surrounded by our floor-to-ceiling bookcases packed with literature on philosophy, sociology and anthropology, pondering deep questions of morality, humanity or eternity (as far as a lot of us are concerned, that’s already been done and we can just refer to this handy guide). But we all spend a lot of time thinking.

I will concede that thinking is often underappreciated. Often, we should spend more time thinking before acting. We don’t value thinking as much as we should because, if done correctly, it’s not typically accompanied by any visible action.

As an editor working at newspapers, I would occasionally take the time, alone in my office, to ponder a question of how to approach a column I was preparing to write, or how I would ask a reporter to carry out an assignment, or which photograph to use on the front page (my photographers were usually eager to make that choice for me).

But if someone walked in and caught me staring into space, it would appear that I was doing absolutely nothing — the worst sin in the workplace. I was not typing. I was not reading. I was not on the phone. I was not fast-walking across the newsroom to get from one desk to the other.

And so, aware of the need to look busy, I seldom engaged in motionless, quiet thought. But occasionally I would lapse into thinking without even, well, thinking about it. And, sure enough, I’d get caught.

Publisher to editor: “What are you doing?”

Editor: “Thinking.”

Publisher: “Well stop thinking and get busy. It’s almost press time.”

Editor: “Right!”

Critical thinking is important

Of course, there were those times when I really was doing nothing, times when I would just be staring into space for no reason aside from general listlessness or staying up too late the night before.

“Gary, you okay?”

“Oh yeah. Just thinking.”

In reality, those throughout history who have been considered “leading thinkers” were probably just insomniacs dozing off in the middle of the day.

However, a very important kind of thinking — critical thinking — is indeed in some danger, especially when it comes to political allegiances. It seems people are increasingly wedded to the dogmas of one of the major political parties, sometimes without any reason other than family history or community peer pressure.

I am certainly a conservative and a Republican, but I do try to routinely examine what I believe and why I believe it, which accounts for occasionally wandering off the beaten GOP path in ways that I won’t belabor today.

One of the biggest encouragements I give to high school and college students is to think for themselves, a practice not as common as may be assumed. Question everything. If, after doing so, the answer leads you back to where you started, so be it.

But run every issue or belief through a rigorous set of scenarios to make sure that what you say you believe, or what you’ve been told to believe, is what makes sense to believe.

A.A. Milne, the English author best known for “Winnie-the-Pooh,” once wrote, “The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. A second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. A first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.” I like that.

And give yourself permission to change your mind based on new evidence or evolving circumstances. Freedom of thought and speech are pretty boring and even wasted if they are never occasionally revised and updated.

In other words, “I’m thinking it over” is good practice from time to time. And Jack Benny would be proud.