Joelle Steele's Blog - INTELLIGENCE
Blog Subjects: Creativity * Health * Money * Politics
Relationships * Social Issues * Spirituality * Miscellaneous
02/11/2023: Being a Free Spirit and a Polymath
We live in a society that loves to label people, to classify them. He's a house husband, she's a barista, he's a Christian, she's a CEO, he's a millionaire, etc. When it comes to me, those who know me best tend to label me as a free spirit. I can live with that. I really don't like being labeled at all, but if someone needs to hang another appropriate label on me, I would prefer to be called multifaceted, multidimensional, well-rounded, or at the very least a Renaissance woman, and at the very best, a polymath. Those are a lot better than being described as an amateur, dabbler, or dilletante simply because I do so many different things.
Free spirits are generally defined as nonconformists and free-thinkers who are uninhibited and don't conform to the normal rules of society. That's definitely me. Polymaths are defined as those who possess a wide range of knowledge about complex subject matter and are good at problem-solving in their fields. And that's me too, a free spirit and a polymath.
And I do live the life of a free-spirited polymath. I follow my heart and make my choices about people, things, and activities. Whether it's work or a hobby, I do in-depth study – private instruction, classes, reading a ton of books, or all three. Then I practice, honing my skills. And if I see a career in it and definitely know I can do something on a professional level, I go my own way, working independently, almost always self-employed, and almost always home-based.
But there are pros and cons to being either a polymath or a free spirit. Put the two together, and there are even more pros and cons. For me, most of the pros and cons come to the forefront in my work. For example, one of my areas of expertise is in face and ear identification of people in photographs. I have more than 40 years of experience measuring, analyzing, and comparing 25,000+ faces and ears to 75,000+ exemplars, and I am court-certified as an expert witness in that practice. But I don't have a degree in this subject because there is no such degree. It is given only an insignificant amount of attention within the study of anthropology. As a result, while some anthropologists have a passing familiarity with it, most have nowhere near the experience and expertise that I do. Not bragging, just a fact.
Now I could have easily taken a degree in anthropology, but since I had no intention of becoming an anthropologist, I instead channeled my free spirit side and opted to study face and ear comparisons independently under experts in the specific areas that I wanted to learn. And I didn't go to work in law enforcement because that free spirit in me doesn't like hierarchical, corporate-type organizations where one must conform to a particular way of doing things. As a result, I have had the time to do additional research and experimentation into other ways of more accurately analyzing and comparing faces and ears that the high-falutin' scientific associations dismiss because it isn't the way they do it.
My other career pursuits are similar: I'm also a court-certified handwriting forgery expert; a court-certified expert in the usual and customary practices of the landscape industry; an interior designer; an astrologer; an artist; and a writer, editor, researcher, illustrator, and publisher. I knew that all of these would be my careers when I was a teenager, and that's when I first started studying all of these things. I have also tried my hand at some things that I didn't really enjoy much and quickly abandoned: designing and making clothing, shoes, bags, and jewelry. But I have never stopped studying and experimenting with new things and new ways of doing things. And when I write, I usually concentrate on the subjects related to my career pursuits, although my free spirit enjoys writing novels too!
Now what are the cons of being a free-spirited polymath? There's actually just one big con, and that's the amount of effort necessary to achieve credibility for what I do career-wise. Society – and certain segments of society that love labels so much – really, really, really want people like me to have those magical little letters after my name: PhD. Not gonna happen in my case. A bachelor's degree was it for me. But I just keep working and hoping that some day people will judge me (and others) by how well I do what I do, without the need to squeeze me into their preformatted little molds.
In my opinion, everyone has the potential to be a free spirit and/or a polymath. It's all about balancing your choices and needs – and not falling into the trap of thinking that being a free spirit means you've got a free pass to be irresponsible and unreliable. No one gets anywhere in life that way! My work, my hobbies, my family, and my friends have always been very closely intertwined, and I am always grateful for all the trips down the many paths I have taken along the way to where I am today.
05/27/2022: My Life As A Polymath
I have always loved to work and be productive. I'm not the kind of person who can sit around and do nothing. Even when I'm watching TV I have to be doing something aside from just sitting there staring at the tube. Both my parents were the same way. As I write this, I'm 69 years old, and I still work and I have no intention of retiring. To me, retiring would be like giving up the things I love to do the most. That is definitely not what I want for my life. The idea of retirement is an old 20th century construct that I just can't get behind.
To me, picking a career that was right for me was not easy. I am a creative person and a polymath. I have been that way since I was a small child. I express my creativity through whatever medium I choose, and I like to study, learn new things, and do a wide variety of things professionally. This is what makes it appear to some people that my career and work experience are erratic, that I do a bunch of things that are unrelated or unfocused. But, they are definitely not. If you look very carefully at what I've done throughout my life, you can easily see that there has always been a very clear connection among all the things I do.
In particular, there are two common career threads I've woven to fuse everything together quite seamlessly. First, there's writing (which includes editing and publishing); and second is art (which includes illustration, photography, and graphic design). These are the things I love to do most in the world and I have done them all consistently since I was a small child. I consider being an artist and writer as the primary focus that blends together everything else I do.
What else do I do? Well, I've done quite a lot over the years, most of which I became interested in as a child and as a teenager. I've been a face and ear ID expert since 1980, court-certified in 1989; an astrologer since 1975, specializing in career/life purpose; a handwriting forgery expert since 1985, court-certified in 1993; a legal writer since 1983, specializing in small business contracts; designer 1977-2010 consulting on and doing interior, floral, interior/exterior landscape (court-certified in 1991 as an expert on the usual and customary practices of the horticultural industry); digital photo restorer 1994-2016; residential property manager 1983-1997, managing 200+ residential rentals and doing vintage home remodels; speaker 1983-2003, covering 15-20 cities twice per year, speaking on small business practices and a few other subjects, mainly to the horticultural industry; and adjunct faculty instructor at various colleges in California and Washington since 1983, teaching all of the things I do, including writing, publishing, web design, genealogy, and small business management.
Whew! That's a lot of work, and I have enjoyed almost all of it except for property management. I also had a lot of temp and part-time jobs over the years, mostly doing editing or office work, including everything from switchboard operator to photo archivist. These were mostly jobs that I didn't particularly like, but I had to pay the bills, especially when I was sick and had enormous medical bills to pay for almost 20 years. I also did a lot of volunteer work along the way (1970-2010), mostly consisting of editing and producing newsletters for non-profit groups, helping at homeless shelters, and working at low-cost/no-cost spay and neuter clinics and feral cat colony management. I had planned to quit volunteering after I moved to Washington, but then I got sucked into helping seniors downsize and organize their things when they moved into much smaller homes or retirement communities, which I did for four years (2006-2010).
So, that's the life of this polymath. It's 2021 as I write this, and today my primary career focus is on genealogy, my writing, and on my forensic services: face and ear comparisons to authenticate identities of people in photos, and forgery detection in handwritten signatures. I do occasionally help someone with their small book and landscape projects. But I mostly want to spend a lot more time on my own projects. Right now, I've got a lot of books in progress, and there are a lot of blank canvases in my art studio that I would like to paint. Always something to do!
10/12/2021: Memory - Eidetic, Photographic, and Autobiographical
Eidetic memory is often confused with photographic memory, but the two are not the same and both are much debated topics in the scientific community. Photographic memory is defined as being able to take a brief look at a page of text and then later recall and repeat that text without seeing it in one's mind. Eidetic memory, on the other hand, is defined similarly but it comes with both visual and auditory memories.
I'm fairly eidetic, but not photographic. I tend to remember what things look like in books I've read, and sometimes I do recall specific details. I also remember things I've seen written on blackboards from kindergarten through college. To this day, I remember the scientific classifications (taxonomy) of Linnaeus by merely "looking" at my tenth grade science teacher's list on the blackboard in my head. I can see everything else on the blackboard too, and can also see most of the front part of the classroom.
I can also see, with great clarity, what people and places looked like at any point in time if I was once there at that time. And, when I'm putting my grocery list together, I'm walking down the aisles of the store in my mind. And once I'm at the store, I look inside my refrigerator in my mind to see if I'm out of anything I may have forgotten to include on my list. This doesn't always work perfectly, since despite my best efforts at picturing one of my cupboards, I once ended up with five bottles of Thai Peanut Sauce.
When I worked for a landscape contractor, he had everyone write down phone messages in a yellow paper spiral notebook. When he would be looking for a particular message and couldn't find it, I could usually find it right away because I remembered what the page looked like and what other messages were next to it.
I think that my eidetic memory may be related to music too, but not to any musical ability. Whenever I want to memorize song lyrics, I just write them down or type them up, and then when I sing the song, I look at the typed-up lyrics in my mind.
I can also recognize the most subtle differences in a song that has been re-recorded or re-mastered. I can spot key changes, and subtle changes in how an instrument or an instrumental passage is played in the newer or different version. I think this is because I can hear a song in my head, down to its tiniest details, the way it was originally recorded. This is a totally useless ability, by the way. I can't think of a single application for it in the real world.
When I wrote my memoirs, it was very clear to me and my family members who read them that I have a good autobiographical memory. Part of this is probably because I have been doing astrology and genealogy for many years, and both rely heavily on documenting life events. But my life events are also fully documented in my in-head calendars – see my blog about synesthesia. I can look back to any year and know what happened to me or in the world (at least what was important in the world to me). In the reverse, I can think of almost any event in my life and know what year it happened. Most of the time, this is a great thing. Other times, there are a few things I'd like to forget …
04/26/2021: Knowledge is Freedom!
I love my life and I love my work. I am one person with many careers. On several occasions I've been asked how it's possible to simultaneously pursue multiple careers and be fully competent in all of them. Well, it's not as difficult as it may seem, partly because I have a very high IQ (186). But the main reason is that while most people spend their spare time watching TV or browsing the Internet, I've spent almost my entire life's spare time reading, learning, and pursuing my hobbies and interests. Yes, I do keep up with my social media. I look at all my accounts every morning. And, I do watch TV, but I'm very picky about what I watch, and I rarely view more than about 10 hours per week, and I'm only interested in international movies and television.
I got a head start on all my careers because I began reading at age 3, and my parents had thousands of books on many and diverse subjects, especially history and the arts, in addition to all the great works of fiction. From the age of 16 to this day, I generally read at least two to four books per week, fiction and non-fiction. My current list of books read contains 4,458 books – a tremendous amount of information (and I confess I didn't absorb it all). And I never discount the knowledge that comes from reading fiction, especially the works of authors writing during their own times. Those novels provide amazing insights into how people lived and thought over the centuries – something of which most people today are profoundly ignorant.
So I've assimilated a lot of knowledge, and they say "knowledge is power." But for me, knowledge is all about freedom! With the exception of a few full- or part-time jobs along the way, it has kept me out of the corporate world where I always felt unfulfilled and, quite frankly, bored stiff. Knowledge has expanded my creativity into every aspect of my life. You or your business have a problem? I can probably troubleshoot it for you and give you a variety of workable solutions, because knowledge opens your mind and allows you to see the big picture, the tiny details of which it is composed, and the way everything fits and works together. With that knowledge, if it's not working, you can always fix it.
Knowledge has also given me the flexibility to study and pursue my many careers that I always find both interesting and challenging. Of course, simultaneously pursuing multiple careers brings with it the additional challenge of juggling them all and keeping track of various projects and a large client base. But, if nothing else, that has taught me to be uber-organized! Computers were the answer to keeping track of everything. I first laid my fingers on a computer keyboard in 1975, and just a few years later I jumped on the computer bandwagon with my first of 14 computers, both PCs and Macs. At first, I learned to build them myself, but later I had them built for me to my specifications. And I learned to code and started my first website in 1994.
All of my careers sprang from my hobbies and interests. I've studied lots of things, including ancient Egyptology, archaeology, history (mostly European), philately (stamp collecting), deltiology (postcard collecting), fashion (history and design), and geology (rocks and fossils) – all things I am still interested in but never pursued as careers. But my earliest interest that resulted in a career was astrology.
My father was interested in astrology and he owned several books on the subject. When I was about 13 years old, I read his books and started studying astrology in depth. By the time I was about 16, I could erect a chart manually, but a company in San Diego was selling charts of all kinds that were computer-generated and much more accurate. I became much more proficient as a result of their charts. When I was 24, I began a consulting practice, emphasizing career and life purpose (midheaven astrology). I chose this specialty because I quickly discovered that when a client had problems in almost any area of life, many times the problem and the solutions were found in their chart's midheaven. I've read 217 books on astrology, and a few on astronomy. It's a very complex subject. There are more than 350 items that can be analyzed in a single birth chart (horoscope chart). Most people do not know this and usually just dismiss astrology entirely. I've taught astrology, and I've written about 53 articles and four books on the subject, with one book still in print.
I also studied graphology starting around age 14, and I became a forgery expert at age 34, becoming court-certified four years later. Since then, I've analyzed more than a thousand documents including letters, wills, bank drafts, invoices, employment applications, diaries, anonymous/threatening letters, etc. Not as many books necessary to learn graphology, but I managed to read 56. While I wrote about 60 articles on the subject, I only wrote one book, now long out of print.
When I was 24, I became interested in anthropometry, the measurements of the human body. I was only interested in the use of anthropometry for the analysis and comparison of human faces and ears in order to authenticate the identities of people in photographs. At the time, I had become interested in genealogy and I had about 500 loose family photos and a friend's four family albums, all filled with faces in need of identification. I began practicing professionally when I was 30 years old. My first client was a Nazi hunter with 200 photos of purported Nazi war criminals, two of which turned out to be exact matches. Anthropometry is a very complex subject because there are more than 100 measuring points on the human face and more than 35 measuring points on the human ear. I read 110 books and articles dating from today all the way back to the Renaissance era, some in other languages I can read, and others that I had to have translated. I also traveled widely to consult with several experts in related fields to fully understand whatever was unclear or missing from these books and articles. I've analyzed and compared more than 25,000 unidentified faces in photos, and I've written five books on this subject, four of which are still in print.
But there's more. I always loved gardening and working in the yard, usually with my mother (who knew a lot about horticulture because she grew up on a farm). I read about 20 gardening books before I got a vocational certificate in ornamental horticulture. I then got a part-time (later full-time) job in the landscape industry where I worked for five years, after which I had a partner in a landscape business for 12 years, and then was a landscape designer for another 10 years. During all those years, I also attended and spoke at conferences, taught in the classroom and on lecture circuits, provided consulting services to the industry, published two periodicals for the trade, became a court-certified expert in the usual and customary practices of the landscape industry, and had more than 150 articles published in almost every trade magazine in the green industry, and had 13 books published, one of which is still in print. And through it all, I still love gardening, although my own yard is huge and my back is unwilling at times!
And then there's art and writing. These two careers go hand-in-hand and tie everything else together – hobbies, interests, and careers. I think I must come by these talents genetically, since I have so many ancestors and relatives who were/are artists and writers. My mother was creative in art and writing, and she had several friends and cousins who were artists. My father wrote fiction as a teenager, and both he and my mother had cameras and loved photography. In addition, my father's stepfather was a classically trained artist from Italy, and he made a huge impact on my art, as did the art instructor who taught me for nine years from the age of 9. I also collect art. I started at the age of 15 with my first of 70 or so antique European decorative landscape etchings. I started collecting vintage pottery vases and antique silver bracelets a few years later. And I still have collections of stamps and postcards, although I no longer collect them. So I've learned a lot about all of those different kinds of collectibles as well.
As an artist, illustrator, designer, and photographer, I've created numerous works since I was about 5 years old. Many of my illustrations and photos accompanied articles I wrote about horticulture, forgery, astrology, face and ear anthropometry, and a host of other subjects. I did 20 or so commissioned paintings for interior designers; do meticulous digital photo restoration; and have had my drawings (ink) and paintings (watercolors, oils, and acrylics) exhibited in a variety of art venues. And, in addition to designing my own book covers, I have designed upwards of 50 book, CD, and magazine covers for others.
As a writer, editor, proof reader, creative director, and publisher, I have worked on far more projects than I can even begin to count. My first book was a chapbook of poetry published when I was 24, and my first short story and my first article were published a year later. I've had more than 700 articles published and 45 books. Then there are short stories, poems, and songs. And literally thousands of works for hire: catalogue descriptions; annual publications; directories of hotels, restaurants, parks, and membership organizations; web copy; and a wide variety of marketing letters, ad copy, and official reports of one kind or another. I also read a variety of law books and took several law classes before I began writing and selling more than 100 contract templates for small businesses in 1983. And from 1983 to 2016, I taught more than 500 adult education classes on the various aspects of writing and publishing.
Knowledge really is freedom for me. It's why I do the things I do. It's why I love the things I do. And it's why, at 70 years, I'm still doing all those things, and still reading and learning more and more every day!
03/06/2021: Spatial Sequence Synesthesia
The hemispheres of the brains of ambidextrous and left-handed people, like me, are almost symmetric, which is the same as it is for people with synesthesia. But among synesthetes, ambidexterity is higher than in the general population. I'm ambidextrous but I didn't even know what synesthesia was until about 1998 when I saw it being described on a TV show. The person who was talking about it saw colors associated with words. So, out of curiosity, I studied up on synesthesia to find out more about it.
I had always thought that everyone's brain worked like mine did, that they had these cross-sensory perceptions. But my form of synesthesia, like my brother's, was not about colors associated with words. Instead, we have what I learned is called spacial sequence synesthesia. We have calendars in our heads, although from our descriptions, they seem to look decidedly different. I can't really describe my brother's since I don't exactly live inside his head, but he says his takes the form of a ribbon.
My in-head calendar is a lot different than my brother's. First of all, I have two different kinds of calendars, one for the year and another that shows decades and centuries. I can open up a decade and look at individual years in the form of a fly-out drop-down type of menu like you would find on a computer. Many of those years have specific events listed on them that I apparently felt were worthy of remembering. I made some computerized drawings of what they look like and how they work.
This type of synesthesia is linked with, but not the same as being eidetic. A synesthete can generally reference their spatial visualization to remember things, as I do with my in-head calendars that highlights historic events. This type of synesthesia is related to having an extremely good memory, which I have. But I have always attributed my good memory to the fact that I practice astrology and genealogy, and both rquire a lot of documentation of one's life events. Also, from early childhood up until about 2016, I kept extensive journals about my life which I entered into the computer (with some major editing and deletions). I then made it into a book, a memoir of my life.
It's an interesting aspect of what's happening in my brain, but it doesn't really serve much purpose outside of my being able to remember a lot of things from my life.
03/06/2021: The Big Brain Theory
I'm a high IQ polymath. A polymath is someone who is an expert in many fields or disciplines. My IQ is 186, measured post-1980. This means that my IQ is in the top one-tenth of a percentile (the 99.9th percentile). I used to belong to three high-IQ societies, so I have met a lot of other high-IQ people, and I have learned a lot about IQ and IQ testing, and about people with high IQs. Here's what I've learned.
First, having a high IQ, even a super-high IQ like mine, does not make a person the least bit better than anyone else. The many high-IQ people I've met in Mensa (top two percent or 98th percentile), the International League of Intelligence (a.k.a. "Intertel"– top one percent or 99th percentile), and the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (a.k.a. "The Thousand" – top one-tenth of a percent or 99.9th percentile) have proven to me, without a single doubt, that intellect has nothing to do with the quality of a person as a human being. High-IQ groups have just as many truly kind and loving members and out-and-out assholes as you would find in any other segment of the population of the world.
Second, IQ does not guarantee any form of success in life, even if you are exercising your "superior" intellect daily. IQ is merely a guideline used to measure knowledge and how you use it. That alone will not help you in this world. Hard work is far more likely to bring you success, in whatever form you conceive success to be.
Third, being a know-it-all and trying to prove you have all the answers all the time will not endear you to anyone. I learned this from doing all kinds of research as a writer and just through the studying I've done in various subjects. Studying and research are great as far as expanding your mind. But no matter how much I learn, all I ever know is how unbelievably little I know, and how I can never know everything.
We should avoid becoming so sure what we think is right that we condemn those who don't think or believe what we do. I think we always have to remember that now matter what our IQ is, we only know what we know as of today. Tomorrow, a new discovery could be made that revolutionizes our knowledge and makes us think differently about everything. I think, in particular, that scientists need to put aside the self-righteous notions they so often have towards anything that they can't immediately prove with empirical studies. It's been only a little more than 50 years since we began proving the parentage of a child using anything other than blood types – which turned out to be completely inaccurate! And, it's only since 1983 that we've been using a DNA testing method that is 99.99% accurate. Who knows what the future holds?
We have to keep learning, keep searching for the truth, and not assume we already have all the answers. The more you know, the greater the thirst for more knowledge, and knowledge changes with time. What you learned in high school, what you learned last week, what you think you know, is always subject to change. Learning is dynamic. It forms your opinions and ideas, and if you are always learning, your opinions and ideas will inevitably be modified or shift and change completely as the world changes around you and new information is discovered and becomes available.
You have to keep learning to keep current with the world. In many instances you'll find out that you were wrong about something. And you should never be afraid to admit that you were wrong or to change your mind. It is only the ignorant who cling to their old, outdated opinions and ideas. The opinions of the educated and informed, regardless of their IQs points, will always be evolving over time, and they are the ones who will ultimately foster progress in their own lives as well as in the world at large.
02/08/2021: Being Ambidextrous
I first realized that I was ambidextrous when I was in the second grade and broke my left wrist. I didn't know what it was called at the time, but I had always done things with both hands. Now that I had a broken left wrist, I had to write with my right hand too, and that's when I discovered I could also write almost as well with my right hand.
Over the years, I found that I could even do mirror writing with my left hand. I have better fine motor control with my left hand. So, if I want my handwriting to be really pretty, I use my left hand, and in painting, I do the same, using my left hand for the finer details. This kind of distinction between hand use flows into almost everything I do.
I can use a hammer, a screw driver, and almost any tool equally well with both hands, including scissors. But, when I need strength, my right hand is the one I use, and there are some things that always require that strength. I used to play guitar, and I played left-handed. My pre-arthritis right hand could hold down the strings better to chord, but my left hand could pluck better. Oddly, I once tried out a boyfriend's violin and immediately realized that if I played violin, I would have to play it right-handed, because more fingering is done with the left hand when it's played right-handed. I could also play the flute left- or right-handed.
But then there's baseball in which I bat left and pitch right, for no reason in particular, and I don't even know if I can bat right-handed at all because it has never come up, but since I can sweep and rake left- or right-handed, I assume I can also bat right-handed equally well. I can play tennis with a racket in either hand. I can work a ten-key calculator by touch with either hand.
I can also do some things with both hands simultaneously, like painting and running a hand-held hair dryer (to dry the paint) at the same time that I'm manipulating that paint. Or I might be painting with a brush in one hand and working a palette knife or sponge in the other. The one place where being ambidextrous has paid off best for me is in doing online research where I work the mouse with my right hand while making notes on paper with my left.
Statistically, only ten percent of all people are left-handed and only one percent of people who are ambidextrous can write equally well with either hand. There is a also a greater incidence of high intellect in ambidextrous and left-handed people. Paul McCartney and Leonardo Da Vinci are two famous ambidextrous people. I'm not famous, but I do have a very high IQ at 186.
Back in the 1980s when I was having my brain analyzed again and again after a traumatic brain injury in a car accident, I ended up for a short time in a brain study of people who are ambidextrous. The brain was scanned while you were solving certain kinds of problems or answering 50 very different kinds of questions. The questions were designed with more than one correct answer, and how you answered indicated what part of the brain you used to solve the problem or formulate your answer in each question. In the end, I got the following evaluation:
"Right hemisphere responses, 3; Left hemisphere responses, 2; Integrated responses, 45. Your brain evidences very strong integrated hemisphere activity that gives you the ability to equally employ analytical/scientific and intuitional/creative approaches to problem solving. You can switch seamlessly from one to the other. You excel in daily activities because you can easily grasp the central issues in problems and you can plan detailed steps to reach goals. You are sensitive to both verbal and spatial relationships which allows you to develop and synthesize ideas. Your thinking and learning skills are extremely well integrated."
I think that being ambidextrous and having a more symmetric or integrated brain may be the reason why I find it so easy to do things in both the arts and sciences equally well and to shift back and forth between those two kinds of thinking, as I do in writing fiction and non-fiction. Other than that, I can't think of anything about being ambidextrous that is really earth-shattering news. I have met two people who lost their ability to use their right hands and had to learn to do things with their left hands, and one of them told me that it took him about a year to become a lefty. So, I think it's very possible that anyone can become ambidextrous if they just use their less dominant hand more often. Practice makes perfect, right?
08/21/2019: Make Better Decisions by Learning to Think Critically
If you graduated from college, you probably had to take a required class in Critical Thinking. If so, let's hope you are already using what you learned. But, if you never took the class or it didn't make an impact on your thinking, it's never too late to become a critical thinker. You don't need to be a genius to be one, but it could definitely pump up your IQ and help you make better assessments and decisions in your daily life.
Everyone is capable of thought. But critical thinking is not about what you think, it's about how you think. It's about your ability to understand something fully, from all angles. It's about organizing your thoughts, examining and analyzing them, and determining who or what to believe. Along the way, you will also have to recognize and change the flaws in your own thinking that have previously prevented you from being a rational and critical thinker.
Some things defy critical or rational thinking. For example, let's look at religion. Do you believe in a supernatural being, a creator, a god? Do you believe in this being because you see proof of his/her existence? Or do you believe because someone told you to believe? It doesn't really matter, because religious beliefs are faith-based. You have freedom of thought, so you can be a critical thinker and simultaneously believe in a superior being. But, some religions go beyond spiritual beliefs and encourage or require their followers to blindly make decisions based on antiquated or even cruel practices, many of which are either misinterpreted or re-interpreted from ancient scriptures. Requiring a parishioner to wear a head covering is a benign request; cutting off the hand of a person who is caught stealing is cruel. Recommending that followers all vote for the same candidate is ethically questionable. Requiring them to vote for a particular candidate is a violation of their constitutional voting rights. Critical thinkers can believe in a god without developing "herd" mentality and merely following their church leaders like sheep. Baaaaad!
So what is involved in the critical thinking process? Several things. Let's start with identifying the subject, issue, problem, or question. Be very specific in doing this. For example, if the subject is a voting choice between Mary Smith and Bob Jones and Bob wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and Mary doesn't, you may think that Mary is the better candidate because you're pro-abortion. But that's superficial thought, because most people have not read and/or don't even understand Roe v. Wade. So, your job is to first be sure you fully understand what Roe v. Wade is and why so many people support it before you cast your vote. Read up on it, and read all sides of the issue, the arguments pro and con, and be sure you read or listen to reliable, expert, non-biased sources who have hard data to back up their viewpoints.
And remember, a critical thinker is not going to vote for any candidate based on a single issue. What about Bob's platform regarding health care reform versus Mary's Medicare-for-All plan? Study the big picture and all the lesser details behind it. Your vote should be for the greater good and not just your own self-interests. But the many issues that have to do with other aspects of your personal and family life should be analyzed in the same way as your voting preferences.
One of the most important things that a critical thinker is capable of doing is changing their mind when new facts or information are presented. Making a decision based on something you believed was true when you were 15, 25, 35, 45, or however many years old you once were, is always a bad idea. So is adopting the beliefs of your family members as the truth.
Times change, new facts and information come forth, outdated ideas need to be shed in the light of recent facts. Critical thinkers move with the times and don't hold on to tired old beliefs and prejudices. They don't look for ways to confirm their beliefs. Instead, they evaluate, change, or update their beliefs on a regular basis.