A thesis is a statement that takes a “unique” and sometimes “not so unique” stance on an issue.
However, that is the easy part … because a thesis has to be proven. Proven with research, data, facts and logical thinking.
But the problem sometimes with proving the Thesis … is that same research, data, facts and logical thinking can often disprove them rather than validate them. As the thesis owner you can do two things … ignore those contradicting facts or change your thesis completely. But sometimes its too late to change the thesis!
Because your paper is due tomorrow, your blog article needs to come out so you can watching funny vines or you need to win that Facebook argument even though you know your original argument/thesis makes no sense. So rather than changing the thesis we ignore the contradicting facts/data and instead focus on the ones that support our arguments. That is society!
You see at child-birth we are all given a series of thesis. We get it from our initial interaction with parents, from the media, from our pastors, from interacting with friends … everyone is handing them out like candy on a Halloween night. We don’t develop our own thesis because we are too young so we have to take what we get.
But as we grow older we start to experience the world, the world challenges our original thesis with facts, data and practical experience … like when the neighborhood dog chased you even though your friends said all dogs were cute. Or when that political party your parents swore was evil turns out to be not so evil.
Day in day out our thesis will be challenged but as always we have options … the first is to defend our thesis no matter what the world shows us or the second is to change our thesis based on what the world has shown us. The reality is that most people operate with the first option … that is defending their thesis no matter what! Only a few are able to change their thesis …
The first set of people are typically extremists … as their viewpoints never waver no matter what happens around them … but the second set are flexible in their thinking, they are more interested in supporting the facts than supporting a thesis.
You would know if you are in the first set if you have never changed a major political, philosophical or religious view-point in the last couple of years. And I am here to tell you that if you are in the first set, then you need to start looking at your viewpoints more objectively because if we have more people in the second set we (society) might end up having much more intelligent discussions and debates about life!
This is my thesis … but I am not sticking to it!
Okechukwu Ofili is an author, speaker, and blogger and a The Trent Elite Voice. Follow him on twitter, Facebook or subscribe to his blog for more honest talk and as @ofilispeaks on instagram for more sketches! To bring Ofili to your school or organization as a speaker simply go here. His third book How Intelligence Kills was published in December 2013, order it at https://bit.ly/intelligencekills.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
