“Just as our capacity for learning depends on thinking, our capacity for thinking well depends on learning. So another central factor that distinguishes human beings from other creatures is related to our ability to learn. While we have instincts like other animals’, they don’t always automatically govern our behaviour to as great a degree. This factor gives us free will. We’ve been endowed with the combination of these frontal lobes and freedom, which enables us to learn throughout a life time. …If we have adults in our young lives who help us learn to think well, we benefit in a multitude of ways . If we have adults in our young lives whose own thinking is suspect, disordered, or otherwise limited, our thinking will be impaired by what we learn and don’t learn from them. But it would be nonsense to presume that we are doomed. As adults, we no longer have to depend on others to tell us what to think or do.”
(Source: M. Scott Peck MD, ‘The Road Less Travelled and Beyond’, (Touchstone, 1997, New York) pp 28-9).
Alice Letts 