When you are critical with any thing that isn’t compassion you create Peace. 

How a potter makes pottery, while he beats from outside… extend support from inside- all for keeping the pot in line with design & purpose. Sometimes not damaging is extending healing. 

This present era is of knowledge. Knowledge is what everywhere is open & free. And as we are upstanding to fight against consumerism for the benefit of the people and planet earth well, what we are becoming ourselves is more of a consumer. It’s the information and knowledge that is our prime food above food. Air water, sunlight and then its information that we are drawn to. 

How true is the phrase: “world be full of knowledge”? 

Food for thought is whether this knowledge is setting us free to live our truths and by the same truths what are we becoming? Perhaps not free but enslaved each day more to our minds. The purpose of all the knowledge and information is to provide an extra edge to perform an action that is goal-oriented in timely patterns with motives that erupt out of our thinking.

Information & knowledge are like the boat & the sail but the wind that drives the ship is our thinking. 

What we think manifesting our expression in the form of stories or as written narratives or art in any form is real to us irrespective of their nature like true or false, right or wrong, subjective or objective.During crises, our words show where our souls have been feeding. Everything is an expression of our experience. 

As expressed by William James: My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.

What do storytellers do? They are the people with a point of view, but have you ever wondered about the role of an audience, whatever its size be? They help shape our stories of how the world works; at their very best, they can empower our moral imagination to envision how the world could work better. How true it is, when they say “power lies with the people”? 

People help mediate between the ideal and the real by cultivating the right balance of critical thinking and hope. Truth and falsehood belong to this mediation, but it is guided primarily by what we are made to believe is real.

The irony of the irony is our world is getting in the grip of consumerism, the objective is to earn profits & then everything else is subjective. But then is the time when the world needs more poets, writers & artists who can fuel the fire Kindling critical thinking in the masses. 

As says Ms Maria Papova, we need writers like William Faulkner, the Nobel Laureate who came in an age of brothel, saw humanity at its most depraved, and yet managed to maintain his faith in the human spirit. 

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he asserted that the writer’s duty is “to help man endure by lifting his heart.” In contemporary commercial media, driven by private interest, this responsibility to work in the public interest and for the public good recedes into the background. 

Yes, people sometimes do horrible things, and we can speculate about why they do them until we run out of words and sanity. But evil only prevails when we mistake it for the norm. There is so much goodness in the world — all we have to do is remind one another of it, show up for it, and refuse to leave.

If you are Indian or interested in Indian politics, the recent episode on Maharashtra State Government’s crisis, a pivotal judgment by the honourable Supreme Court is an optimum index on critical thinking that points out how bluff is not just baffling but powerful if not put the right mind into the right scenario. 

The case in a crux is on a batch of pleas including one seeking disqualification of 16 Shiv Sena MLAs of Shinde (shiv sena, who later merged with BJP party) who revolted against the Thackeray(shiv sena) leadership.

The truth is that bias that can be useful can also blind us, and to catch the bluff, and not get carried away with bias one have to think critical. Critical thinking is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and make a judgment about what you read, hear, say, or write. The term critical comes from the Greek word kritikos meaning “able to judge or discern”

Increasing screen time is stealing away sleep and putting the mind to sleep dampening the ability to think and to be creative. Constant scrolling and depending too much on ready-made opinions is the rising trend. 

The opinions are cooked out of motivations fueled by hidden incentives. More and more problems and solutions and uncovering ideas and options are beyond people’s comprehension & they are overlooked homogeneously.

When the population is untrained in critical thinking skills it is more likely to fall for the first silver-tongued orator who appeals to any number of fallacies than one who has been equipped with foundational skills in grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

Socratic questioning is unsettling, and people in power often prefer docile followers. Furthermore, a lively imagination, alert to the situations, desires, and sufferings of others, is a taxing achievement; moral obtuseness is so much easier.

No amount of training can create empathy, sincerity, and experience, but a grounding in the humanities could go a little way in mitigating the worst excesses of bot-like behaviour and a shield against the threat of Artificial Intelligence. 

What can mitigate the Threat of AI? 

What distinguishes humans from machines is our ability to think and perceive. Screen time which for kids is often related to scrolling & dampening their creativity, cognitive ability, and reasoning and also causes tunnel perspective, impacts, reflex action & overall mental & physical development. No doubt if not taken care of the coming generation of children will be much like bots. 

The point to ponder is, why do young kids fall into the trap of screens? The addicted parents cannot stay off the screen, parents are always distracted by technology. “Behaviour” is what kids model quite quickly. The Covid crisis pushed further the problem of dependency on On-Line education which has added fuel to the fire.

Where we need to put all our efforts into keeping kids off-screen, we have to help raise awareness for the adult population too, building them into awareness, knowledge, and critical thinking. 

https://twitter.com/manukumarjain/status/1659474694007922690

A leader does not tell you what to think & teaches you how to think as people model him and his actions. When the population is aware of their why and what, when you have a clear pathway to why & how. Humans are social animals & being human is our substance. An Inside out approach leading from the heart can’t miss on humanity, and when you do you will never compromise on being critical of anything that is against human values. 

As they say, the highest wisdom is kindness. Isn’t wisdom the outcome of critical thinking… deep thinking on how to create a beautiful world for you and me and the coming generations? 

When the alignment of Goals Product, Pricing, and Pitch all fall into place with objectivity to subjectivity with Purpose Passion Positivity?  

Know yourself 

Know your why

And when you do

How will appear

guiding through

And that’s the way

Of the heart.

Believe its whisper

And fear not to follow it

“GUARD”… your heart 

for everything you do flows from it.

The Socratic Method is often used to promote critical thinking. 

It focuses on providing more questions than answers to students and fosters inquiry into subjects. Ideally, the answers to questions are not a stopping point for thought but are instead beginning to further analysis and research.

As Socrates says, ” When you know the answers to the question of “WHY WHAT HOW” in lieu for the welfare of not one sect or cult but for the whole of culture and citizens, the outcome is wisdom made of critical thinking and it is well-being for all. 

When you are critical of all negatives that nay support positive IS “Critical Thinking”!

When you are critical of everything that isn’t compassion IS “Critical thinking”!!

When you are critical of everything that doesn’t care to propose well-being for all IS “Critical Thinking”!!

Post Views: 405