By Jim Heffernan
There could be something wrong with me. I say that because one of my favorite movies is a hired killer comedy, 1997”s “Grosse Pointe Blank”. I challenge anyone to count the gunshots in the movie. At least 10 people are killed and two buildings are destroyed. It’s one of those late night movies that I watch often. Sometimes sleep robs me of the ending, sometimes not. I see it as a sweet boy-gets-girl movie mixed with farcical carnage. It always leaves me happy.
1993’s “I Can See Clearly Now” is the song that introduces the movie and it’s a wonderful celebration of unbridled optimism. Here is a link to a You Tube clip of the song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHxhQPOO2c. I challenge you to listen to the song and not feel at least a little better.
“I can see clearly” is a wonderful goal. I tell myself that I see things clearly. The big question is: Do I really see clearly, or am I lying to myself? It could be either. Thinking about the phrase has prompted me to make this piece a “two-fer”, combining a brief movie review and a book review. Both revolve around the idea of seeing things clearly.
I was attracted to this 2021 book by the question on the cover, “Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t.” My reading binge these last few years is my attempt to see things clearly. The scout mindset was a new concept to me. When I looked into I was struck by the thought that my career in factories was dependent on me useing the scout mindset.
I’ve always managed to get along with my peers, those in charge not so much. The nuns always warned me I would end up working in a factory. I think they saw working in a factory as a circle of hell, not at all like the jobs that would send me to work wearing a tie. They were right about where I would ended up, but they were wrong about the factory.
I worked 40 years at the factory and found it to be a sheltered place with a social hierarchy that I slipped into naturally. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I found a music in the noisy clatter that filled the air when the factory was running. As long as things were running, not much was expected of me. When it stopped, I was expected to hustle and do whatever it took to make it run. I didn’t call it that then, but my scout mindset is what I used. Truth mattered, everything else was wasted motion.
Back to the book, the book divides us into people who use the scout mindset and those who operate on the soldier mindset. The soldier mindset sticks to procedure and plows ahead. Sometimes the reasoning is rooted in deception. None of us are immune to deception.
Where the scout mindset differs is that it entertains the possibility of error and usually sees through deception. Sometimes even the scout is foiled by self-deception.
In the book, she cites a survey where people were evaluated for the quality of their predictions. It turned out that the people who were most accurate were the people who changed their minds the most often when they were working out possible outcomes. Education and experience were not good predictors.
Motivated reasoning is what leads the soldier to false conclusions. She explains motivated reasoning is driven by six overlapping needs, comfort, self-esteem, morale, persuasion, image, and belonging.
The book is 232 pages of text with another 50 pages of notes, acknowledgements, etc. It’s divided into 5 parts with 15 chapters. The scout/soldier mindsets are totally original to this book. The material about biases and the scientific method have been covered by other books I’ve read, but I don’t think we can ever learn too much about seeking the truth. I enjoyed the book and highly recommend to anyone who seeks to develop a scout mindset.
I’ll close with the last paragraph of the book,
”We’re not a perfect species. But we should be proud of how far we’ve come, not frustrated that we fall short of some ideal standard. And by choosing to become a little less like soldiers and a little more like scouts, we can be even better still.”
Book is available at Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and Tillamook County Library (oddly as summary only)
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com