“Eat The Meat And Spit Out The Bones”: A Parable Of Critical Thinking And African/Angolan Meat Dishe

“Eat the meat and spit out the bones” was an old adage I repeatedly heard as a business undergraduate student. Interestingly enough, as an Angolan and having eaten countless helpings of my Mum’s scrumptious dishes over the years, I get the truth of this metaphor as specifically with beef and fish dishes the meat will enliven your very being, but trying to eat the bones could potentially choke, or hurt you. The adage basically implies that it’s wise to be selective with the the information we take in. Or to put it even simpler, critical thinking is the sh**. This seems like common sense that anyone could use to their benefit. However, an interesting observation I tend to encounter in casual conversation with people is that we don’t at times apply the validity of this golden truth when considering the information we receive from highly successful people.

The Challenge:

Most likely, if you’re aspiring to do anything great in business, or achieve some level of success in your own life you will need the help and wise-counsel of other people--everybody feeds off of someone other than themselves, and I do understand that this idea flies directly against any commonly held notions of self-sufficiency i.e. the “self-made” woman or man. For the sake of this article we’ll call these people our mentors. I'll define our mentors here as people, likely with much experience in a particular field, who possess attributes that we find valuable, and that we may wish to learn from, or emulate. Examples of these attributes could include specific ways of thinking, leadership styles, individual hustle, or well developed talents. In some sense--whether deliberate or unintentional--these people become our mentors as we interact with them through mediums of connection such as podcasts, books, netflix series, personal relationships, music etc. Consequently we consciously and or subconsciously give them the ability to influence our worldviews, and additionally the ways in which we think, eat, buy (or don’t buy), hustle, socialize, worship and much more.

Depending on who we choose as our mentors, they may prove to be enormously helpful as we navigate through life and all it offers us. However, we may also develop unhealthy biases toward our mentors that inhibit our ability to critically think through the information we receive from them.

The challenge for us then is being able to approach the information we receive from our mentors holistically; in light of their humanity i.e. successes, failures, strengths, and imperfections by effectively “eating the meat and spitting out the bones.” Given this challenge, I’d like to focus on an important question that might be helpful in filtering through the information we receive from our mentors:

Specifically what part(s) of what we've learned from our mentors do we actually want to emulate, imbibe, and or apply in our own lives?

Why Is This Important?

Critical thinking helps us to solve problems, which is a necessary skill for people everywhere, most especially business people. To help us sort through the abundance of information we're bombarded with on a daily basis it's important to be able to--with respect to our very evident human limitations--effectively filter what is, and what isn't helpful to us. Critical thinking affords us a more holistic view of our mentors i.e. their strengths and imperfections and offers us a chance to digest information in a more balanced and potentially objective way.

Simply because someone is an authority in one area does not mean that they are an authority to be listened to in all areas. Additionally, it does not mean that they are flawless in their area of mastery or that we should take everything they say as gospel. That would be a logical fallacy: appeal to authority. We humans are imperfect and error prone. Embracing this imperfection in ourselves and in others is healthy, and allows us to view people's lives, actions, and words with greater sobriety and humility.

Some Questions to Consider About The Information We Ingest From Our Mentors:

• Why do we listen to these specific mentors, and what is it about these people we potentially want for ourselves?

• Are our mentors original in their own ideas or were they also influenced by someone else? If so who specifically influenced them? Can we trace any of their ideas to their specific origins?

• Are there any ideas or life-consequences that arise out of our mentor(s)’ way(s) of life that we definitely do not want for ourselves?

• What things would we do differently if we were in their position as leaders/influencers? And why would we do them differently?

• What are the potential implications of what we’ve learned from our mentors in our own life, and in the lives of others in our community? Do they add value to the human family at large?

• How can we adopt a more holistic view of our own mentors and what we learn from them in light of their own humanity i.e. strengths, weaknesses, success, and failures?

Real-life Example:

To hopefully “hit home” I’d like to use Steve Jobs here simply because he’s a well known figure, and I’ll admit that I’m quite a fan of Apple products in general as well. Speaking metaphorically in the context of African/Angolan meat dishes, Jobs was a master chef who prepared a wonderfully scrumptious ox-tail stew for people all over the world to enjoy--provided they could afford it of course. In this metaphor, the meat in Jobs ox-tail stew represents the unbelievably life-enhancing effects of wonderful innovations like the iPhone, and the Macbook among his other accomplishments; the lessons we can ingest from his creative stubbornness, narrowly focused passion, resilience, and his ability to “think differently” and implement his larger-than-life vision into reality. Of this meat I will gladly eat. Simultaneously, the bones within the ox-tail stew that Jobs prepared represent his apparently pro-machiavellian leadership style, where the end (a great product) seemed to justify the means through which he attained it; his general rudeness and lack of empathy toward others; and Apple’s questionable ethics record during his leadership and the culture that continues to perpetuate it post Jobs. These are the facts, but then again, Steve Jobs was also human and no one is perfect.

#ethics #criticalthinking