Human civilization is stagnating at the lowest levels of thinking, primarily due to evolutionary predispositions, technological design, and societal identity structures, preventing individuals from ascending to higher cognitive functions like analysis, evaluation, and creation.
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Human civilization is built on pyramids.
And I'm not just talking about the stone
ones baking under the Egyptian sun, but
invisible structures, hierarchies of
thought, layers of meaning, and levels
of thinking that range from the most
basic impulses to the heights of true
revelation. And yet, despite the
astonishing tools, knowledge, and
information available to us today, most
people never climb past the very first steps.
steps.
In school, in politics, in culture, and
especially online, the majority of
society still operates at the lowest
layers of thinking, remembering, or more
accurately, simply regurgitating
everything that they've been told. not
thinking for themselves, not questioning
or examining, just echoing words without
the weight, opinions without origin,
beliefs without understanding. And
here's the terrifying part. Most people
don't even realize there are higher
levels of thinking that you can ascend.
Why have we all forgotten how to think?
And what happens to a society when no
one wants to think beyond the surface?
These are the highest levels of thinking
and why society is stuck at the bottom.
In 1956, an educational psychologist
named Benjamin Bloom unveiled something
that he called the taxonomy of
educational objectives, a structural
hierarchy on how humans learn, think,
and process information. It was
originally designed for teachers, a way
to help students progress from basic
memorization to deeper, more
sophisticated forms of thought.
But the more I looked into it, the more
I realized that this wasn't just a
framework for classrooms. This was a
blueprint for human cognition itself. a
kind of mental pyramid that reveals why
some people develop clarity,
perspective, and wisdom, while others
remain stuck, repeating what they've
been told without actually having any
deeper understanding of those things.
And the fact that he made it a pyramid
and not just a staircase meant that
Bloom accidentally created the perfect
metaphor for modern society. Because
today, most people are stuck at the very
bottom of that pyramid. And the higher
you go through the levels, the fewer
people there are. For those who don't
know, here's a brief explanation of the
pyramid. At the bottom, you have
remembering, which is simply repeating
the information you've been given
verbatim. The next is understanding, the
ability to explain ideas in your own
words. Application means using the
information to solve simple problems.
After that comes analysis, the ability
to compare, contrast, break things
apart, and see the hidden structure
behind ideas.
Evaluating allows you to form judgments
and determine priorities. And finally,
at the very top, you have creating, the
rarest level, where you take everything
you've learned and synthesize it into
something genuinely new. a fresh idea, a
new model, a new perspective that didn't
exist before.
Unfortunately, most of humanity never
reaches level four, while some never
even reach level two. But the crisis
isn't just that people fail to reach the
top. It's that they don't know they're
stuck at the bottom. They believe that
they're thinking simply because
information is passing through their
minds. It's like riding a shotgun and
convincing yourself that you're the one
steering. Now we live in an era of
unprecedented access to knowledge. Uh
the entire sum of human history is
available in your pocket. And yet that
paradox is painful. The more information
that we have, the less we seem to understand.
understand.
We confuse awareness with comprehension.
We confuse memory with intelligence. We
confuse noise with depth. To understand
this crisis and the path out of it, we
have to start with the foundation. Level
one, remembering the age of regurgitation.
regurgitation.
This is where most online discourse
lives. It's the land of slogans, sound
bites, Tik Tok commentary, and inherited
opinions. It's the cognitive equivalent
of fast food. It's all pre-cooked, pre-
chewed, pre-digested.
There's not really any thinking
required. You just have to repeat what
you saw. That's why you can scroll for
10 minutes and see 50 people expressing
the same hot take in slightly different
words. It's why political debates
devolve into a shouting match between
people who don't actually understand the
very talking points that they're
repeating. It's why misinformation
spreads faster than truth. Truth
requires you to think. Falsehood only
requires volume.
Level one thinkers believe they're
engaging, but they're merely paring.
They've outsourced cognition to
influencers, tribes, pundits, and algorithms.
algorithms.
Theirs is a secondhand experience. It's
a borrowed mind. They are in a sense
intellectually asleep while imagining
themselves fully awake. Level two,
understanding the illusion of comprehension.
comprehension.
Some people climb one level higher. They
can explain an idea back to you. They
understand the words, the definitions,
the basic structure of information. But
this is still a fragile understanding,
one that collapses the moment life
becomes at all complicated. This is
where a lot of online debaters end up.
These are people whose ideas only work
on the opposite ends of the spectrum.
Once you introduce any sort of nuance
into the conversation, their entire
argument collapses and their worldview
becomes threatened. Imagine someone
explaining inflation, crime rates,
mental health, addiction, social
inequality. Well, they can define the
terms, describe the concept, maybe even
give a few examples,
but they've never stepped back to ask
the next question. What does any of that
truly mean? And how do I know this is
true? And what else might explain this?
The illusion of comprehension is one of
the most dangerous cognitive traps and
it's why most pseudo intellectuals end
up at the second level. People who know
they are uninformed are capable of
learning while people who believe they
understand when they don't, well, they
can get stuck forever. Bloom's hierarchy
wasn't meant to describe society. Yet,
it has become the perfect metaphor for
the modern world. We are drowning in
information but starving for insight.
We're plugged into infinite content and
yet disconnected from actual thought.
The lowest levels which should be only
the starting point for deeper thinking
have become the entire destination.
Civilization has flattened into a single
plane where the easiest form of
cognition dominates every conversation
repeating what somebody else has already
said. If you want to understand why
society feels fractured, shallow,
polarized, exhausted, anxious, and
overwhelmed, you have to understand how
we got stuck at the bottom of the
pyramid. And to understand that, we need
to go deeper into the psychology of the
There is no conspiracy, no villain
pulling the strings from some hidden
shadow. The real enemy is a combination
of evolution, emotion, technology, and
culture. All working together like
gravity, pulling the mind towards the
path of least resistance. And the brain,
it loves efficiency. Not the truth. The
human brain, frankly, wasn't built for
philosophy. It wasn't built for
abstraction, long-term planning, or even
careful reflection. It was built for
survival in a dangerous world.
Spotting threats, reacting quickly,
conserving energy, and avoiding uncertainty.
uncertainty.
Thinking deeply is metabolically
expensive. It burns real calories. The
brain is only 2% of your body weight.
Yet, it consumes around 20% of your
energy. And every time you engage in
higher level cognition, whether that's
analyzing, evaluating, or creating, your
brain is doing something evolution never
optimized it for. In psychology, this
has a formal name, cognitive miserliness.
miserliness.
The brain uses as little mental energy
as possible. It prefers shortcuts,
heruristics, patterns, and familiar
answers. And odds are you've experienced
this in small ways. Skimming instead of
actually studying, watching summaries
instead of reading the book, nodding at
an idea that you don't actually fully
grasp. The mind is wired to avoid effort
unless effort is necessary for survival.
This is why the bottom of the pyramid
feels good. The first levels,
remembering, understanding, and maybe
even applying, are relatively mentally
cheap. They rely on pre-existing neural
pathways and they reward repetition.
They don't require any restructuring of
your beliefs, no discomfort and no
conflict with the tribe. The higher
levels, however, analyze, evaluate,
create, those demand reconstruction.
They require friction.
They force the brain to wrestle with
conflicting data, suppressing emotional
impulses, and challenging its own identity.
identity.
Evolution doesn't like that. So, it
punishes you for trying. Thinking deeply
literally feels bad at first. There's
this cognitive soreness, the mental
equivalent of lifting a heavy weight at
the gym for the first time. Now,
unfortunately, most people mistake that
discomfort as a sign that they should
stop or even worse, they take it as
evidence of failure, which I'll assure
you now, it is not.
This phenomenon, called the
misinterpreted effort hypothesis,
explains why the climb up Bloom's
pyramid feels impossible for the average
person. The moment thinking stops
becoming smooth and effortless, people
assume, well, I'm confused, I must not
be smart enough, something's wrong with
this argument, this topic is just too
complicated for me, or I'll just trust
someone else's explanation.
Well, that what they don't realize is
that difficulty is the doorway to
intelligence. Discomfort is the signal
that you are rising into higher cognition.
cognition.
Most people turn around at the first
sign of struggle, mistaking an uphill
climb for a dead end. And that's not
because they're incapable or or stupid.
They're not. But it's because nobody
taught them that deeper thinking
requires discomfort. Nobody told them
that thinking has a weight to it. Nobody
told them that burning means you're growing.
growing.
There's also the fact that deep thought
does require time. A lot of which you
don't get in our society today. As
humans, we used to lay down and stare at
the stars each night surrounded by loved
ones around a fire. We had time to
pause, think, reflect, and tell stories.
Today, people wake up exhausted. They
work jobs that drain them, scroll feeds
that overstimulate them, and live in a
world where attention is always fragmented.
fragmented.
Thinking in such a world has become a
luxury, one that most of the population
can simply not afford. And so society
stays on level one simply because it is
If evolution made thinking hard while
technology made it unnecessary, today's
digital world is engineered to reward
the lowest levels of cognition. Social
media feeds are structured around
instant reaction, instant outrage,
instant validation, instant identity
reinforcement, instant emotional
stimulation, instant instant, instant.
And nothing, not a thing about this
environment rewards slow, reflective thought.
thought.
Platforms make more money when you
operate at the bottom of the pyramid.
They want you to remember, share, react,
repeat. And by the way, don't forget to
like, comment, and subscribe.
Analysis slows you down. Evaluation
breaks the emotional loop. Creation
takes time. In essence, deep thought is
bad for business. So, the internet spoon
feeds society prepackaged opinions,
bite-sized takes, and tribal narratives
the way a parent feeds a toddler mashed
peas. And like toddlers, most people
swallow whatever's given to them. Not
because they're stupid, but because
chewing is just difficult. Technology
has become a cognitive prosthetic. We
outsource our memories to cloud storage.
Social understanding to influencers.
Curiosity goes to the algorithms.
Creativity leave that to the AI.
Opinions let the tribe speak. Every
year, more mental labor moves from the
biological mind to the digital one. And
outsourcing always comes with the cost.
Unused ability withers.
When calculators became common,
arithmetic skills dropped. When GPS
became common, navigational intuition
disappeared. When search engines became
common, factual memory worsened. So what
happens when we start to outsource
thinking itself?
Well, we are beginning to find out.
According to a global survey, nearly
half of adolescents between the ages 12
and 15 do not meet the minimum level of
reading comprehension set by education
standards around the world. In other
words, almost half of the younger
generation struggle to read with
understanding, not just decoding words,
but grasping meaning and context. In the
United States, the latest national
assessment testing reveals a worrying
downward trend. In 2024, reading scores
for fourth and eighth graders dropped
again. This marks the third straight decline.
decline.
In 2025, a high school senior cohort
recorded their lowest reading and math
performance in decades with over 30%
lacking basic reading skills. At the
same time, surveys show a decline in
voluntary reading and engagement with
text. A recent 2025 literacy survey of
young people ages 8 to 18 found only
about 1 in three said they enjoy reading
in their free time. The lowest reported
reading enjoyment rate in two decades.
These aren't isolated trends. They are
revealing a worrying pattern. As
educational and cognitive demands shift
outward to your screen, the algorithm or
search engines, foundational capacities
like reading comprehension, sustained
attention and independent thinking are
getting worse. So, what does this mean
for politics, culture, and public
discourse? Well, politics becomes about
who can deliver the most emotionally
charged bite-sized message. Public
discourse devolves into repetition of
surface level opinions rather than
genuine debate. And all of this has led
to one of the worst things that we are
Perhaps the most powerful force keeping
society at the bottom is identity. Most
people don't realize this, but by
adulthood, their beliefs are no longer
cognitive. They're tribal. Once an idea
becomes part of someone's identity, they
stop thinking about it altogether. But
they defend it, they protect it, they
justify it, and they repeat it. All
without pausing to question it.
Everything becomes a loyalty test. My
group believes this. Well, people like
me say this. My side supports this.
Well, I can't question this. It's who I
am. Identity collapses the pyramid into
a single step. There's no need to climb
if the goal is not truth. but belonging.
And the tragedy is this. The smarter a
person is, the better they are at
justifying their tribal beliefs.
Intelligence doesn't automatically lift
people up on the pyramid. Sometimes it
actually traps them even deeper at the
bottom because they can create more
elaborate excuses for why they shouldn't
climb. When access to information
becomes infinite, people assume
understanding becomes infinite, too. I
saw a video on it. I read a headline.
Well, I know what this means. I already
understand this issue. Information
creates the illusion of expertise.
Knowledge creates the illusion of
wisdom. And society confuses both with
thought. Why climb if you believe you're
already at the top?
Identity based thinking also favors
emotion over cognition. People don't
ask, "Well, is this true?" They ask,
"How does this make me feel?" And
feelings are the enemy of higher order
thinking. Because analysis requires
emotional distance, evaluation requires
neutrality, creation requires clarity.
But today's cultural climate treats
emotions as sacred. If something
offends, challenges, or discomforts,
it's rejected outright long before the
mind has the chance to properly engage
with it. The pyramid collapses whenever
If the lower levels of Bloom's pyramid
represent the gravitational pole of
modern life, then the upper levels
represent something radically different.
Intentional cognition. The kind of
thinking that doesn't happen by
accident. The kind of thinking that you
have to choose. It's cultivated, built
like a muscle. And most people never
experience it. And that again, not
because they're incapable, but because
true thinking feels nothing like what
we've been taught. It's slower,
stranger. It's more uncomfortable, more
humbling, and yet far more
transformative. To understand the path
upward, we must first shatter a myth.
Climbing into a higher level of thinking
isn't about consuming more information
or having more opinions or collecting
facts like they're souvenirs. It's about
changing the relationship between you
and your thoughts. So, let's break down
how this actually works and what
separates real thinking from its cheap imitations.
At level four, thinking becomes
structural. You're no longer simply
absorbing ideas. You're taking them
apart like an engineer studying the
blueprint instead of admiring the
building. Analysis is the art of
comparison. How do A and B differ? What
assumptions underly each? What patterns
keep repeating? What contradictions hide
beneath the surface? But genuine
analysis requires something that our
culture has almost forgotten.
Intellectual patience. You can't you you
cannot analyze anything if you're
rushing. You can't analyze anything if
you're emotionally triggered. You can't
analyze anything if you're only seeking confirmation.
confirmation.
Analysis begins with slowing down enough
to ask a simple but revolutionary
question. What's actually going on here?
Not what you want to be happening, not
what you've been told is happening, but
what is actually happening? This moment,
the pause, the distance, the disidentification
disidentification
is the first real step towards higher
cognition. You're no longer the puppet
of your thoughts. You're the puppeteer
Once you can compare ideas, the mind
must take the next uncomfortable step. Judgment.
Judgment.
Evaluation is level five, and it's often misunderstood.
