LegendaryLife.com Blog

Critical thinking can be defined as not always accepting things at face value, if something seems out of place, it’s your responsibility to question it until it makes sense.

Critical thinking in our media

The lack of critical thinking in our media, the source of most of our information has gotten all of us in big trouble on multiple occasions. The time leading up to the invasion of Iraq was the result of the largest critical thinking vacuum in recent times as is the constant crackdown on political descent in such places as Burma, China and just a few weeks ago, Pakistan. Governments know that information or the subversion of the critical thinking process to be specific, is the best way towards achieving domination over it’s citizenry short of military intervention. It’s cheaper to control the media then to send patrols out. Of all the countries brainwashing their citizenry, North Korea has to rank among the largest out there, with state owned media, state owned enterprises and essentially, state owned minds making up the vast proportion of the population. Want to change things in a country? Easy, simply unleash the powers of critical thinking into the media which will then leach into the minds of people. The control of knowledge and how it’s disseminated is more powerful then any military weapon invented in modern times.

Critical thinking requires education

Critical thinking only comes with the power of knowledge, without an education in a vast array of areas, the ability to ask the right questions is impossible. You see, if you cannot mine the fragmented resources of your mind and yield something of value from it at the end of the day, the entire process will be very much a half-assed affair in the best of times. You can see this process of educational dumbing in many cults, suppressive governments and in poverty stricken countries which also happen to be in constant wars as well, leads to an easily malleable population. Going back towards controlling a population, you want to keep their minds busy on non-dangerous activities that take up resources that may otherwise evolve into critical thinking. A great example of this was under the Iraqi Saddam Hussein Regime, the entire educational system evolved around him, kids where not counting apples, they where counting Husseins. Another is Saudi Arabia, the country with the most highly educated population in the Middle East yet needs to import just about every profession just to keep their economy going. Why? Because the population is told to study religion instead of engineering, accounting and suppresses half it’s citizens (women) from getting any education at all.

Developing critical thinking

The only way to develop your critical thinking systems is to constantly expose them to new experiences. Get out of your comfort shell, visit the slums of this world, expose your mind to other types of thinking and most importantly, always try to learn something new on a daily basis. You need to keep working on your weaknesses while re-enforcing your strengths. This can be done a number of ways but the easiest is exploring this vast planet we all live on. As for me, I have learned more about the world living in different countries then I ever could reading a book or studying about them. If a picture is worth a thousand words, being there is worth a million.

The Bottom Line

Knowledge is only as powerful as the questions you ask.