"True thinking is rare"

"The people I listen to need to talk, because that’s how people think. People need to think. Otherwise they wander blindly into pits. When people think, they simulate the world, and plan how to act in it. If they do a good job of simulating, they can figure out what stupid things they shouldn’t do. Then they can not do them. Then they don’t have to suffer the consequences. That’s the purpose of thinking. But we can’t do it alone. We simulate the world, and plan our actions in it. Only human beings do this. That’s how brilliant we are. We make little avatars of ourselves. We place those avatars in fictional worlds. Then we watch what happens. If our avatar thrives, then we act like he does, in the real world. Then we thrive (we hope). If our avatar fails, we don’t go there, if we have any sense. We let him die in the fictional world, so that we don’t have to really die in the present.
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People think they think, but it’s not true. It’s mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking. True thinking is rare— just like true listening.
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Thinking is listening to yourself. It’s difficult. To think, you have to be at least two people at the same time. Then you have to let those people disagree. Thinking is an internal dialogue between two or more different views of the world. Viewpoint One is an avatar in a simulated world. It has its own representations of past, present and future, and its own ideas about how to act. So do Viewpoints Two, and Three, and Four. Thinking is the process by which these internal avatars imagine and articulate their worlds to one another."

E pensar para além do dia a dia? E pensar para além do que se está a fazer sobre o que se deverá estar a fazer depois de amanhã? E pensar para além do apagar o fogo que irrompeu esta noite? E pensar sobre se o que se está a fazer é o que deve ser feito mesmo?

Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos