The Secrets of Developing Creative Thinking Skills : Part 1

"All men by nature desire knowledge." -Aristotle

Sometimes I sit down and think about the fact that our world is rather ridiculous. Depending on how I feel at the time, my reaction varies from laughing to crying. Have you ever thought how silly it is that millions of us should be on a little planet spinning in space? We don’t know where it’s heading (except for the fact that if we don’t do something about global warming, this plane might turn into a Waterworld, like what was depicted on the movie by Kevin Costner.); we don’t get along with each other (history is riddled with hatred and wars), most of us have never seen much of the rest of the planet; and the majority of us don’t really care about it (huh, going back on the global warming issue.) Just so long as we have food in our stomachs, a roof over our heads and money in our pockets, and the latest cellphone money can buy, the earth can go on spinning crazy on its axis for all we care. We are struck with it, and on it, except for a handful of people who have taken desperately expensive trips away for a week or two.

However some people will not settle for those indifferent approaches. They are unwilling to live aimlessly caring nothing about why they exist. Ages and ages past, there has been a lot of people who paused from their business and think about their existence. We might call them the geeks of today. They don’t stare all day long in front of their computers and clicking on the mouse for something new to stumble upon in the internet –they are philosophers. They are people who try to work out principles that lie behind human conduct and thought. They endeavor to seek out meaning and knowledge and unravel the mysteries of our existence and the meaning of existence itself. We have a lot of things to learn from them today.

It is sad to note however, that in our scandal-filled society and celebrity-endorsed lifestyles, credible thinkers or philosophers are almost extinct or go unnoticed. Few and fewer people are engaging in creative thinking and muse about the goodness of people and life itself other than sex, money or fame.

What the world needs today are creative thinkers who think about the good of this generation and the next. We can start today. We don’t necessarily need to get a degree, or confine ourselves in a remote cave like a monk to engage into creative thinking and meditate. Philosophers before spend so much time thinking what other philosophers think, and deciding they think others are thinking wrong. We don’t have to take that path. For the more they thought in that direction, the more uncertain they have become. What we need though, is develop creative thinking skills and engage popular worldviews.

How do we develop creative thinking skills?

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