What Were We Thinking?

We are bombarded everyday with demands, appeals, advertisements, rhetoric, and opinions intended to affect our judgment. From parents to church leaders to politicians, from oil companies to soda distributors we are told how we should behave; what we should buy; and, how we should think.

We are easily influenced. We look for direction from others and accept any opinion as fact rather than thinking for ourselves and arriving at opinions that are wholly our own.

From old-style black-helicopter conspiracists to current birtherism some people form and cling to false beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Sociologist Steven Hoffman of the University of Buffalo calls this motivated reasoning - it is when we seek out only that information that confirms what we already believe. Today there is no shortage of places to go that support every possible belief. Some of us have suspended all critical thinking and completely surrendered our higher reasoning functions to misinformed beliefs, superstitions, and stereotypes. Examples include, how the U. S. Government allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to occur; assassinated President Kennedy; faked the Apollo moon landings; and planned the 9/11 attack. Or how about the extensive list of conspiracies associated with President Obama. They include a faked birth certificate, faked social security number, and that he was or really is a Muslim despite ample evidence to the contrary.

Millions of us believe each of the following: that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and their children emigrated to southern France; Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered; Elvis Presley faked his own death; climate change is a hoax; fluoridation of our water lowers mental abilities; Proctor and Gamble supports Satanism;  AIDS was created by the CIA; vaccines cause autism, and that Bigfoot exists.

There is no shortage of conspirators including any government (especially ours), the Pope, Jews, Christians, Muslims, secret societies, corporations, etc.

This form of thinking is not rare, it is prevalent and every example has significant, often well documented "proof" of its truth.

All of these would be funny if they weren't so destructive. These false beliefs destroy our faith in God, in government, in any of the institutions which we depend upon. They can make us feel helpless. They can make us angry. And worse, there are people and organizations that play up these delusions for personal, corporate, or political gain.

As citizens, we are becoming less capable of applying critical thinking. We are less able to ask or even to form the questions necessary to understand what goes on around us. We seem less capable of discerning truth from fact or fact from fiction.

Truth is slippery in the best of circumstances. Facts without context often form the foundation of lies. And, worse, the stories we hear are often based on selected facts to manage our understanding of events and people. Then we add the embellishments and innuendo. News media, left and right, report their interpretation of events, an interpretation colored, affected, or completely controlled by their presumptions and biases.

Critical thinking is questioning the assumptions of others as well as our own. Many of us are required to do it. Within every profession, critical thinking is absolutely essential for success. However, critical thinking takes effort, it takes time and attention away from our hectic schedules. We are willing to turn it off when it is most needed to understand the world around us and how it affects our lives.

Everybody has beliefs, biases, fears, desires and an ego that serve as filters to what we hear, see, and experience. These filters alter how we perceive reality. When we are incapable of recognizing the assumptions that these present, we are diminished in our understanding of what is truth. We are led by instinct or intuition rather than intellect. It is easy to believe the lies - for truth can be so messy and provides fewer answers than we demand.

Critical thinking is a disciplined process of actively and skillfully questioning what we hear, see, experience. As best practice it seeks clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. Unfortunately, it requires a sustainable level of attention - a challenge given the immediacy of the multi-tasking environments we subject ourselves.

Life is far more complex than the black and white, left and right, or them and us boxes many of us seem to believe exist. It is only through the application of critical thinking that we will find solutions to the complex problems we face today.