Goal for 2018: Adopt Critical Thinking

Everyone thinks. Period. But despite being in our nature to do so, much of our thinking is mostly uninformed, partial, distorted or worse, down-right prejudiced. Our minds function as a laboratory where one goes to ask questions and put everything around us under a microscope but surprisingly, thinking is an action not many people take proper advantage of.

Critical thinking raises questions and problems, clearly and precisely, as you long for a better understanding of the world around you. It's the ability to engage a self-guided and self-disciplined kind of thinking in committing to overcome our organic egocentrism and recognizing mistaken assumptions, implications, and its eventual consequences.

Sounds excellent, doesn't it? But, how does one become a critical thinker? Well, believe it or not, you were one of them a long, long time ago.

Children are naturally critical thinkers, always eager to know the who, what, where, how and why of life and looking beyond any invisible pre-established social boundary such as class, race, and gender. They just don't care about anything else other than to learn from the world around them. Relentless interrogators, demanding answers of everything they could get their hands on.

But sadly, it stops when we are able to catch a glimpse of how life actually works, and we learn the hard way, how the world fuels on conformity and obedience.

From a very young age, we are taught that thinking is annoying, it's what meddlers do, and it's something to be feared of so, somewhere along the way, we stop enjoying the process of thinking, and we shift our focus to something else, accepting things just as they are.

I was lucky enough to be raised in a family that unapologetically questioned everything, and despite being more open-minded than the rest of my peers, it took me a while to actually realizing what critical thinking meant and how much benefit I could get from it.

It begins with understanding the many problems that still linger in our societies and how much they need solving asap, but one doesn't become a critical thinker overnight.

We have been brainwashed to believe we don't need knowledge just because, we only need to consume information so when the time comes, we'll be able to use it. And we'll get paid for it, while we are at it.

Therefore, knowledge is the starting point. Facts, ideas, data, theories; critical thinking is born out of human curiosity, open-mindedness, a desire for complex questions. It means not taking "because that's just how it has always been" for an answer.

It involves discovering first the who, what, when, where and how of things and using that information to give you a better insight of the world around you, and hopefully, help you determine what matters the most. It means striving for a clear, accurate and precise point of view, seeking to think beneath the surface.

I've been a critical thinker, or at least I try to be, for a few years now, but it is something that I would love to develop further in 2018. And considering the kind of world we are living in right now, I believe it's an asset you'll want to have too.​

---

Source: Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (2010) by bell hooks, Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools (2014) by Richard Paul
Image Source: I, II, III