The Philosophy of R.C. Miller

 

It seems appropriate - at least to me - to kick off this blog with "basic thinking" as  RC, our grandfather, and RJ , my father, laid out to me late one evening about sixty years ago.  Apparently they figured that I had finally reached the age of reason.

After the plates had been cleared and the dinner table vacated by everyone  except for RC and RJ , they loudly debated God-knows-what.  This was a male only, family tradition dating back as long as I can remember. Voices would be raised and faces would be flushed as the topic bounced around until it was obvious that the only real question was whose thundering voice was more authoritative.  Nothing personal was under  discussion, so nobody’s feelings could get hurt.  And nothing practical was being examined , so nothing of any consequence might follow.   It was a kind of rhetorical calisthenics - like law students practice in moot court.  "Don’t kid yourself !" or “Katie bar the door" were phrases often bandied about.

I had retreated to the sofa ( then called a "Davenport") to leaf through the agricultural magazines that were always lying about our grandparents' house, when both of them decided to instruct me on how to use those cognitive faculties which I had inherited with their chromosomes.    RC, the university professor, often said that he taught OSU students how to think, not what to think - so now I would be the beneficiary of that instruction.  I was especially impressed since it was possibly the first time that these two disputants had ever agreed about anything.

"Basic thinking" is the  excavation and prioritization of whatever principles underlie a problem at hand - as wide and deep as you can go.

That’s not their exact words -  but that’s the gist of what I carried away - and have tried to apply ever since - for better or worse.  The benefits appear  when you’re doing and getting what you want - and I have had a happy, satisfying life.   The down side results from the limits of understanding - and I have made my share of poor judgments.  Some might call it arrogant to assume that you, rather than your parents - or thousands of years of human recorded advice, know what's best for you.

 

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BTW - as my brother, Eric, an expert in programs for self improvement, has pointed out - there is also "strategic thinking" - which, as Wikipedia tells us is " the thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving a goal or set of goals".  "Basic thinking", however, goes one step further and queries why you're pursuing that goal in the first place.

Eric also pointed out that there is "Critical thinking" - which as Wikipedia tells us is "the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.".  "Basic thinking", however, concedes that beneath every "objective analysis" are subjective preferences if not principles.

We might finally note that unlike the two programs listed above,  "Basic Thinking" has yet to appear online as any kind of mental discipline.  And as Eric has now confirmed, RC or RJ never discussed it with him.  Possibly they never determined that he was ready for it - or that only I was gullible enough to be interested.

 

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As a professor of agricultural engineering, RC applied basic thinking to problems in farming - like pest control, for example.  The conventional solution was to apply the best known insecticides. Basic thinking, however, would present a series of questions  beginning with "why do you want to kill all those bugs?" - then followed by "why are you farming?"  - and - "are you working to live or living to work?. Ultimately you’d have to deal with ‘what is the purpose of your life?".  The process could prove quite radical and the results unconventional if not eccentric.  The answer to that final question is both hard to articulate  and liable to change over time. For farmers, RC’s answer was "raising a family".  But how would he have answered it for himself as a professional intellectual in a university?

The most memorable event in his career was when his students rallied to save his job — which was threatened by his  relentless critique of what had become conventional in agribusiness: mechanization, chemical fertilizer, hybrid seed corn, and recurring debt.  Their campaign was successful and RC continued teaching for many more decades.  But what did he eventually achieve other than personal financial security and the gratitude of a few students?  He left behind neither books nor dedicated followers.

After retirement, he began working on a written legacy that presented his ideas about farming.   I was paid something like a dollar an hour to type it out - but we didn’t get very far.  All  that’s really left is the documentary film that Doug made years after he passed.

If he really thought about it, perhaps he would have done more than just teach classes and annoy his colleagues  - but we have to cut the old dude some slack.  His generation was the first in our family to attend a university, and he was the first to teach at one. 

I never heard either RC or RJ use the term "basic thinking" ever again.  It wasn’t really a dogma - it was more of an encouragement to defy convention and think outside the box - almost as if that were more important than anything one might achieve.  At least, that’s how I have always felt about it - but that could just be me as a child of the sixties.  Many parents want their children to be happy — or successful — or important — or prolific -- or enter their trade/profession -- or share their faith --  or be well educated.    "Basic thinking" may or may not  lead to any of those places.  It could lead to running for President — it could lead to committing suicide.

 One might also say that the term was just used to put a positive spin on a radically conservative, reactionary point-of-view.  RC resisted modern agriculture just as my father resisted modern art.  I wonder where else they ever applied it.

Did RC pick up this notion from his father?  As an immigrant from northern Germany, he was certainly a risk taker  - willing to  cast off one way of life to try to build a new one in a very different place. And as a Protestant Christian, he may have been willing to set the results of his own, private consultation with the Almighty above any other authority.  Hopefully someone here knows more about him and RC’s siblings than I do. 

And hopefully other descendants will share what they know about how  their grandfather thought about things.