People are not given adequate methods for using their own intellectual powers. Most methods for appropriating information, including study methods are linear, and non-selective of content. Most techniques for recalling information rely on the rational dimensions of thinking and seldom the non-rational. Most approaches for creating responses are non-analytic. There are few techniques by which one can group the concepts and facts necessary to make responsible decisions. Methods, now coming into vogue, which are non-linear tend to deny the validity of linear methods, creating a rational, non-rational dichotomy.
Intellectual methods are the techniques of studying, teaching and thinking that are both consciously and unconsciously formalized in any culture. They are transferred from one generation to the next both in formal educational structures and in formal actualizing processes. There are few techniques by which one can group the concepts and facts necessary to make responsible decisions.
Most people are using methods of thinking and study which do not allow for organizing, understanding and communicating the high daily input of data they receive. They are inappropriate to human depths. Nineteenth century or mediaeval approaches are used instead of post-modern methods. This results in most people being unable to relate themselves rationally, dynamically and with depth to the day-to-day experience of life. Thought patterns tend to be either mechanical and cause-and-effect oriented, or emotive. Those intellectual methods that have been developed to utilize both the irrational and the intuitive are generally not available.