by Joelle Steele
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.
