Elements of Thought

I've never thought about all the ways reasoning and thinking can go wrong. While I was reading this part of The Nature and Functions of Critical & Creative Thinking, I was blown away by the truth of the words. The way people think is so complex. That's the reason why there are so many religions, ways of life, professions, and variations of any kind. Each individual person will pool their past experiences, current experiences, assumptions, implications, goals, inferences, conclusions, and everything to make every tiny decision throughout their life. I think about my own self: I made the decision to come here. In order to make that decision I had to use all those parts of reasoning. Through ASL class in high school, I gathered that the hearing world and the deaf world were incredibly separated. Poems, stories and lessons lead me to believe that many of the deaf were frustrated with the ignorance of the hearing people around them, be it friends, family or strangers. This conclusion could have been totally wrong. How am I supposed to know? I'm not deaf. Even if I was, every deaf person has their own personal experiences that help them draw conclusions about how they feel regarding the hearing world. The way I intrepreted all the things I began learning about the deaf, led me to believe I could change that. The passion I developed for the people, language and culture led me to decide I wanted to push the two worlds together. This is MY idea of how to change the frustration many deaf feel. Other people's opinions have been quite different from my. I've meet deaf people here that don't like me just because I'm hearing. I knew it would happen but it shakes me to my core sometimes. My inference is that my being here shows that not all hearing people are the same. Yet the end result isn't a general acceptance by the deaf. However, my point of view, goal, assumptions, and inferences are so closely knit that I don't ever let those kinds of experiences shake me to believe I should change my end goal. The way the past years have built my reasoning have kept me from easily giving up on anything. This has been my dream for years and it will stay that way for the rest of my life.