What Does it Take to be a Good, Individual Thinker

What It Does Take To Be A Good, Individual Thinker? A primary goal of this class is to teach you how to think and innovate so that you might become not just more effective writers, but more effective decision makers and problem solvers. When I read through Vincent Ryan Ruggiero’s book The Art of Thinking and came across this passage, I knew it was the book for us. He writes:

The purpose of this book is to teach you how to think more creatively and critically. That may be obvious enough, but it’s really confused with telling you what to think. The difference is this: Telling you what to think makes you dependent on other people’s ideas; teaching you how to link liberates you from dependency on others’ ideas and helps you form sound and sensible ideas of your own. (8)

Strong communicators have ideas of their own—they are creative innovators who have something new to say, or even if they are rehashing an old idea, they bring that fresh perspective that makes us want to listen all over again. In addition to having a creative, fresh perspective, Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink encourages us to trust our thin-slicing rapid cognition, to trust in the thinking that happens in the blink of an eye. His research seems to indicate that effective decision making and good ideas do not always require a lot of analysis or over thinking. So what exactly does it take to be a good individual thinker? And what can get in our way?

Think Before You Write . . . All the philosophers and sages tell us that individuals are rare. Yet the curious thing is that virtually all people consider themselves individuals (or special, unique, one of a kind, different etc). Have you ever asked yourself whether or not you were an individual? I mean, what does it mean to be an individual anyway? Is it just being someone who goes against social norms, dresses differently, sets herself apart from the crowd? Is that what it takes to be an individual? Or could this kind of person just be following the norms within a similar crowd?

When I was a teenager (in the 1980s), there was no such thing as Hot Topic at the mall, where I could buy band t-shirts and studded leather belts or pink hair dye if I wanted to. My friends and I went to the concerts for the shirts, and we had to go to thrift stores and sift through racks of clothes to find worn, ripped jeans and vintage flannel shirts. We drove to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury for Doc Marten boots, which you can now buy at Nordstrom or Amazon.com. It took more effort to locate these items back then, but does that make the effort any more individualistic? Because despite what I might consider a more uniquely fashioned rebellion back then, one that couldn’t be bought at a corporate chain store like Hot Topic, we still dressed alike and shared similar tastes within our friend group. We were still influenced by music, television, magazines, and our peers. Were we individuals? Or were we just following cool trends and banning together?

The sages and philosophers would argue that true individuality is rare because each of us seeks a tribe to belong to, and once we find our tribe, we conform to its social norms and expectations in order to be accepted. This is a good thing, for sure, but this is not how innovation and new ideas emerge. Social and technological progress and effective problem solving depends on individual thinkers who are creative, decisive, who use their initiative and trust their instincts. In what ways might you become a more individual thinker?

Note: you must use “ The Art of thinking vincent Ryan Ruggiero” Chapters 1-4 and Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas in Blink along with your own knowledge and life experiences to develop and illustrate the criteria used in your definition. General definitions that make no references to the readings will not receive higher than a C because I’m looking for evidence you’ve developed some intellectual/academic knowledge from the reading and are able to incorporate those scholarly voices into your discussion.

Demonstrates adequate essay and paragraph writing

Introduction that presents the central focus of the essay in a thesis statement

Paragraphs that address ONE supporting point at a time, usually expressed in an opening sentence

Paragraphs that explain/develop/defend that thesis with specific, detailed evidence from readings,

general knowledge and personal experience

Sentences that employ clear syntactical structure, that are varied in length and style, and

that follow basic rules of grammar and spelling

Integration of assigned reading materials into an original research-based argument

Quotations properly cited in MLA style

MLA Works Cited list