Critical Thinking is the Key
Use that brain, it's there for a reason
Having grown up in the USA, and been educated here, obviously nearly all of my experience is with American culture. Simply because of pure dumb luck, I was exposed through my work to some well-educated Americans who understood the importance of critical thinking, at the ripe old age of about 32, and who made a point to stimulate “critical thinking” in all their employees.
I had been exposed to the idea of critical thinking briefly early in my education and again in college, but most of my work experience from early adulthood on was entirely based on hierarchy and critical thinking was NOT encouraged. I still remember my shock when I was asked for my opinion at this critical thinking job. It seems to me this lack of critical thinking is endemic in the US and it’s one of the many things that MUST change if we are going to improve our standing and our culture; economically, spiritually, and in every other way. I spoke to my mother recently and she mentioned that at her church they had an “organ fund” (for a new musical instrument) which was invested in the stock market and which, like every other stock market holding, had lost 50% of its value in the past few weeks. Fifty percent! She was shocked that nobody other than herself and her husband even questioned why this money was still in the stock market… and that nobody seemed to be able to think through why this was not a good idea… not to mention the fact that fundraising for an organ in this time when people are losing jobs left and right and struggling with how they might feed their children…. might be seen as less than desirable by the community.
We struggled trying to understand why these (she assured me very intelligent and well educated people…) were seemingly unable to think critically about the situation. She said she would not donate even $5.00 to something that wasn’t being managed in a sensible fashion. I don’t blame her. But others in the church had donated $10,000 toward the fund. Our best guess is that people didn’t want to think about the church’s money because it might make them have to think about how they were stewarding their own resources.
Folks it is way past time for America to put her critical thinking cap on. We have got to stop and think about things, be they pleasant or unpleasant, and form considered (and critical) opinions.
It’s long past time to keep taking cues from what the culture throws out (e.g. Greed is Good! Fame Is Desirable! and so on….) and to see if those values and cues are in line with what we really, down deep, otherwise think. The future of the country and society depends on it.
For more on that last bit see this most excellent article on “Things You Think Will Make You Happy But Really Won’t.” (NSFW, and not safe for people who are offended by profanity, but on the other hand, if you are “offended by profanity,” perhaps you should start right there, and critically examine why you are offended by it and what that really means!)
Critical thinking really is the key to a better tomorrow. It’s the path to sanity.
February 23, 2009
Tags: attitudes, business, common sense, critical thinking, culture, thoughts Posted in: Sane
5 Responses
The trouble is that for critical thinking to be effective in this country you have to overcome three major stumbling blocks:
1. The myth that America is the best country in the world to live in. It isn’t. There are far more advanced and responsible countries out there.
2. The myth that Americans are the best people in the world. They’re not. Only Americans think that way because they’ve been brainwashed to do so. And before anyone out there screams “jealousy” – the usual knee-jerk reaction – I have lived in many different countries (lived – not visited) and this is without doubt the most uncivilized and arrogant culture I have ever been in.
3. And lastly the myth of the “American Dream.” It doesn’t exist. The man who works hard at two jobs and raises his kids to be useful members of society will never live the dream. Only the rich live the American Dream because it can only exist at the expense of others.
More than critical thinking is needed. If one thinks very well but does not have the information, or worse has false information then the best critical thinking will be of no help.
Further a deep understanding of how the brain works can reveal a wide diversity of results even when the thinker believes they are very careful in their thinking.
In wandering about the Web I have come across a fair range of places that I thought had merit as a base for literate thinking from ways to think and fallacies to raw data and surprising facts. They started as a subdirectory in favorites but is now a website as I had so many requests for the list.
You make some interesting points FreeDem. I took a look at your site and it was full of resources for literate thinking… I particularly liked the “Resources for Disinformation” (I’m pretty sure that was the title of the document.) Interesting stuff which I highly recommend to anybody coming across it.
I guess the next question is–how do we help people to find the correct information and those surprising facts? I’ve read more than one thoughtful blogger bemoaning the fact that all this information is available 24/7 since the advent of the internet, but that very few people take advantage of it…
Anyway, thanks a bunch for stopping by… I will check out your blog as well. Keep that helpful information coming!
Regards, Ms. S.
Well Ms. Sanity, the 5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won’t)
http://www.cracked.com/article_17061_5-things-you-think-will-make-you-happy-but-wont.html is a big bag of tricks to discuss but it would seem to me that true thinking would require some impetus power of creative life force so that it “lights the way” so to speak. We live in an age of criticism, which
requires no creativity to form it’s opinions but instead I believe has become more of a power of destruction in our age. A lot of what people consider thinking is no more than a rearrangement of predefined ideas, which, if taken literally, would mean an essentially closed system of ideas is being tossed around, no?
I think it’s not only the ability to think clearly that is a problem. That something that gives bouyancy to human beings is so absent and lacking in American life that it’s abscense tends not to be noticed. One place I think it can be observed is in the disconnect between the way many actors deliver their lines and the feeling that you would expect to be expressed with those lines. Where is the life?! Where is the buoyancy!?! Many actors for the most part seem to have nothing within them that has the
ability to grasp what emotion their lines require.
Do we not have a constant swarming and swirling of redefinition and dilution of the meaning of words that define ourselves, our world and our relation to each other? Given that thinking typically needs to be communicated through language, I would think this dilution of language’s meaning certainly poses limitations to communication in general. Add to dilution political correctness and the difficulty in
communicating what one is really thinking becomes precise and also amplified. For instance, how often do you find yourself interrupted by someone who has assumed they know your intended meaning of a word or
a phrase yet they haven’t taken time to listen to the whole of your thought? We have so many cliches that we assume we know. Truly clever we have become.
We expect Politicians to routinely make and break their promises and so hesitancy of meaning, being accepted as due course, is associated with their words by their constituents.
A world famous text begins, “In the beginning was the Word”.
Astrophysicists are telling us that from cosmic microwave background they can tell that the universe was ringing with sound during its first 380,000 years. The primordial sound was 50 octaves lower than
the range of human hearing. Just as larger organ pipes make deeper notes, so the universe’s “pipes” are cosmic in size and make extremely low notes. The primordial sound included pressure waves destined to
grow into the largest structures in the universe. Sounds big. I have to wonder what happens within the heart and mind of man when Something once considered a universal creative power, by man, is diminished as it has been by man’s mind, from a creative life giving force to the generally cold dry science which the use of language has evolved to in America today? Ouch.
Maybe the biblical creation story isn’t so hokey after all.
Where in our society is critical thinking truly given freedom to associate with it’s environment and to
unfold in freedom, untainted by pressure groups?
Did you know that “Think Tanks” are highly paid, not to exercise free critical thinking, but to develop
a line of thinking, a “solution” in support of their funders’ wishes? Seems to make them more of a line of elite propaganda machines than Think Tanks, as they are called.
We have state directed schools that are formulated to create a product. That product, we are told, is best served when he or she will best serve the current business environment. Everybody wins, we are told. The business environment is of course heavily controlled by permits, licenses, and various
methods of state funding or lack thereof according to which areas the state favors. Noncompliance is made very difficult along with nonconformity.
The dreams most follow are someone else’s dreams, their words someone else’s words, their thoughts, someone else’s thoughts. It takes a great effort of will for most anyone to raise themselves above this.
We are told we can be anything – as long as it is on the menu of college programs or job descriptions of course. Anything.
I’m sure you have an idea of what corporate America does with (honest) critical thinkers who may voice their thoughts.
We are told material wealth equals success which is supposed to equal happiness according to this line of thought. Now I’ve seen some awfully grouchy, hateful folk with lots of money. Oh what a restricted idea of the glorious potential of life and what we can offer life we are given in this seductive and powerful emotional formula of carrot and stick and guilt/shame/fear if you don’t fall into step and pursue “success”. Whoohoo, buy the ticket. Take the ride! Think of the vast human potential that is never realized here. I wonder if many people, if they stopped and were honest might say to themselves of this arrangement, “How depressing” and “What pressure!” But most people never have time
to get in touch with themselves enough to know what they really might want to offer mankind. But hey, “shut up fellow and be glad you got a job. You’re not paid to think”. Yessir. Thank you sir.
Here’s an assessment from 1912 on the western educational system, in this case, I assume Europe’s. It is just as relevant today.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/OvrNrv_index.html
“For a whole year, the college student will spend his time and energy quite otherwise than really thinking what the professors are giving in their lectures. Then, when he has to know something for his examination, he will set to work and ‘cram’ for it during a few weeks; and the worst feature is that
there is no real connection — no inner interest of the soul in the cramming, or rather, in the subject of the cramming. In our schools, the prevailing opinion of the pupils often is: ‘If only I could soon forget what I have just had to learn!’ What is the consequence? No doubt, in some respects, men are thus fitted to take a hand in public life. But they are not inwardly united with the thing that they are doing; they feel remote from it. Now there is nothing worse than to feel remote, in your heart, from the things that you are having to do with your head.”
John D. Rockefeller, in the mission statement of the General Education Board (1906) said,
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/2i.htm
“In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we
have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.”
Sounds like what someone hopes to find in their Utopia.
There are also a lot of educational quotes here http://www.goboy.citymax.com/quotesarchive.html from a Home Schooling association. I don’t know anything about them but some of their quotes are interesting.
Why don’t people think? Well, let’s think…..lol
p.s. Ms. Sanity I also meant to mention that since we live in a society of codified morality via political correctness, via laws, we lose the feeling of freedom to even make decisions for ourselves regarding right and wrong and how to treat our fellow man. Thus critical thinking becomes shackled and lamed.
Most every organization for a specific social change seems to eventually become antisocial or bureaucratic, with bureaucratic essentially meaning here that the organization no longer works to serve it’s original purpose but spends it’s energies trying to justify it’s existence.
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