The Day's startling story about contemporary Americans being uncomfortable with their own thoughts is a portentous omen for our aggregate future. It is the price we pay for the increasing alacrity of high-tech advancement further detaching us from our inherent instincts.

It is only in cognitive solitude that we can make peace with ourselves. This priceless gift is becoming so overwhelmed by a mass media onslaught and communication gadgets that people deliberately shirk their own thoughts. It is a ghastly evolutionary addiction to external stimuli.If unchecked it will inevitably prove to have horrific ramifications. Recall Hitler's fascism flourished among people trained to mindlessly obey the dictums of superiors.

Except for our compassion, our ability to reason is the primary factor in our nobility as a species. President Kennedy occasionally mused on the statistical improbability of sparsely populated 1770s America producing three of Earth's immortal thinkers, Franklin, Jefferson and Paine. JFK surmised their slower sociological pace provided them with opportunity to think.

The Day is to be commended for printing this shocking story, "Study's 'shocking findings: Many prefer a jolt to solitary thoughts," (July 4), celebrating that genius triumvirates's collective progency, the U.S.A., a nation born and dedicated to the principle of people thinking for themselves. That is a legacy we dare not abandon.