You can see fear in most people when you bring up topics where the reality is a fairly obvious thing that most people don't want to see. You are correct that they do not think about things, but they make an actual effort to avoid thinking about them because they see the thoughts as evil or destructive or some such nonsense. It's an active evasion that generally produces angry reactions over trivial things.

There are actually stories about this very phenomenon from scammy marketing semenars. People go looking for some miracle solution to some problem, some guy in audience asks the obvious question that invalidates everything being said, many in audience buy the product anyway. When asked why they purchased, they say they wanted the "solution" to all of their problems & they knew if they went home & thought too much about what the "negative" audience member had said they would lose their motivation. They want their belief to change reality. Most people are actively lying & evading reality & they all have a dim awareness of what they are doing.