Why do you think the way you do?

In the 1960 film Inherit the Wind Henry Drummond places his rival Matthew Harrison Brady on the courtroom stand and during questioning asks him “Do you ever think about thinks that you do think about?” While Drummond’s question is phrased rarely harshly, another way of asking the same thing but in a more appealing way is “Why do you think the way you do?”

Thinking is a process that requires intention, reflection and dedication.  Too often, however, people rush to judgment and rely on limited information or believe what others tell them without asking themselves why they think what they think. Failing to examine why one thinks the way they do can disastrous consequences. The American Bald Eagle is one such example.

Bald eagles were officially declared an endangered species in 1967 in all areas of the United States south of the 40th parallel. How is it possible that the nation’s symbol of freedom could have found itself in such a precarious state on the edge of extinction? Because people believed what they wanted to and failed to ask themselves why do they think the way they do?

During the 1950s and 1960s, two beliefs were so prevalent in the United States that the nation’s symbol, the bald eagle, faced extinction.  Belief number one was that the birds, which grow to nearly four feet long and have a wing span of seven feet could prey on young lambs and snatch small children.  Despite little evidence to support this type of thinking, people started to shoot down eagles from airplanes.  This bizarre sport was known as aerial eagle hunting and killed thousands of birds a year by blasting them with shotguns from the open windows of planes.  Was this really necessary?

The second belief was that the pesticide DDT was safe for the eagles as it was just designed to kill bugs feeding on crops. Sprayed on the nation’s crops during this time DDT also got into a lot of little fish the eagles ate.  When the eagles reproduced their DDT ingested food made their eggs so soft that when the eagles would sit on the eggs, they would squash them.  Apparently few people bothered to ask themselves why they thought DDT would be safe for eagles and other members of the food chain.

By 1962 aerial eagle hunting and DDT had reduced the nation’s symbol of freedom to just 417 nesting pairs in the continental United States.  It took decades of work for people to answer the question ‘why do we think the way we do’ but thanks to the efforts of conservationists, activists and authors such as Rachel Carson who published Silent Spring in 1962 and George Laycock who wrote Autumn of the Eagle in 1973, the bald eagle was placed on the engendered species list in 1973.

During the next thirty years the efforts of wildlife and eagle supporters throughout the country the bald eagle slowly recovered.  

On August 9, 2007 the Interior Department removed the American bald eagle from the federal list of threatened and endangered species.  Once down to just over 400 there are now approximately 10,000 bald eagle nests across the continental United States. 

Maybe if people asked themselves why they thought what they did the American bald eagle would never have been placed on the list in the first place.

Why do you think the way you do?