Where did critical thinking go? We seem to have lost it, at least in the West. The ability to observe, analyze, and extrapolate information in order to come to one’s own conclusions is missing, gone. What’s odd is that few seem to notice, after-all they have thoughts rolling around in their heads that they assume are theirs. Yet ask anyone to drill down on their common beliefs or ideas, it’s readily apparent that these are second hand and often poorly understood. It is difficult to reconcile “the most educated generation ever” with the wholesale degradation of thought. What we call education has become, in large part, indoctrination. No longer concerned with teaching students how to think or the quality of thought, instead “education” prescribes what to think even when it is nonsensical. In the Maoist cultural revolution that led to communism in China, the first to be silenced or eradicated were the intellectuals (those capable of critical thought) as to eliminate opposition and questioning of the ideas. The West in its march toward authoritarianism did not need to forcefully remove the intellectuals, it “educated” them instead. What we find, to the disbelief of the many, is that the more credentials one has, the greater the likelihood that they have skewed perspectives, even to the point of delusion.
Tribalism is an obvious and outstanding feature of humanity. As far back as we can peer into history, the human story is one of war, conquest, and “othering” those who are different, even when those differences are infinitesimally small. Judgemental bias is a fact of life for humans. What may have once been a tool for survival, is poorly aligned with modern peaceful society. This bias, being taught in many of Western educational institutions is hate, and it is on the rise, being fed to those unable to parse and understand problems and ideas to identify the faults. That is to say, hate and othering are being taught in the schools. They are being taught to hate the four olds: old ideas, customs, culture, and habits. That is to say, by-and-large, the Wests’ institutions, not just education, want to eliminate traditions, and if not the tradition itself, the meaning. What’s most odd about this time period, is that the most severe type of othering and hate are coming from groups who are obsessed with signalling their virtue. That is to say the most hate filled, i.e. feminists and social justice warriors with advanced degrees, are overly concerned with signalling their virtue to their in-group…. they project their hate onto the others. That is to say, the more they vilify traditional working class Americans, especially masculine white men, the more hate wells up inside of them. They do not see that it is they who are conjuring discontent and the coming tragedy.
It is common today for people to be passionate and so sure of things they don’t understand. They are swept along in the current of in-group and peer opinion that they figure little out for themselves. Most people believe that because they have thoughts rattling around in their heads, that those are their thoughts. Likely, from my observations, those thoughts are programed. They are not your thoughts, at best they are an interpretation of others thoughts, at worst you are living your life as a puppet, believing you are in control.
Puppet, non-playable character, zombie, we have all heard these terms to describe people who just go along with the crowd. For most of us this is our reality. For the one in thousand or ten-thousand who actually does the arduous work of thinking for themselves and deriving their own conclusions… Cheers, you are the innovators and artists. We need more!