Thinkers Vs. Spouters
In grad school, when thinkers write papers, they have their own ideas and they support those ideas with other references--other thinkers they neither look up to nor down upon. They choose ideas that support their arguments but, behind that, they choose ideas that they feel are true regardless of what their own personal biases might be and regardless of what other ideas are popular at the time. Gifted thinkers suspend biases and seek truth. They even change positions when they see truth in unexpected places. Bottom line: When thinkers express their ideas, something new is created.
Spouters have an ax to grind. Their thinking produces nothing new. They choose the biggest kids on the playground and ascribe dogmatically to their thoughts. Spouters are sycophants. Their papers are merely compendiums of prevailing thought that happen to match their own personal agendas. They are swayed by conventional wisdom and pay close attention to what the prevailing thought is to avoid being shunned by the other spouters.
Spouters are bullies. They weary thinkers who may stray into arguments with them (a waste of everyone's time) with repetition, bluff, and subterfuge. If they have no legitimate rebuttal to a point made by a thinker, they attack on some other front. Their goal is not to find out what's true but to win the argument. Every point advanced is tactical rather than clarifying.
The religious spouters are perhaps the most cruel. Even when they sound reasonable and logical, there are undercurrents of greed, fear, and hatred. One of the ugliest things they do is to band together in righteous condemnation of individuals who threaten their ideology.
Religious spouters are Pharisees. They tout the virtues of loyalty to the religious machine they have created and cling dogmatically to the rules that keep their individual sects going. They would rather have their followers be loyal to particular leaders, institutions (such as marriage and family), and rules rather than to truth and goodness. They are likely to spout axioms such as, "blood is thicker than water," when in truth, loyalty to anyone who is not following love and truth is misplaced.
The most efficient way to disarm spouters is to look beneath the surface to answer the question: What's in it for the spouters? What do they stand to gain or to lose? Then their seemingly disorganized array of attacks and counterattacks becomes clear. They are defending something--usually power. Once that determination is made, the clouds of confusion begin to evaporate and the spouters can be left to spout at themselves.They thrive when they have something to push against. The most satisfying conclusion is to dismiss them without further time or effort.
