Is critical thinking a dying art?

[Stinky The Clown]

The last few months have shown this to be a real possibility. There has been a great deal of knee jerk reaction. But there always is. Except these days the knee jerk seems to have an added component, a secret ingredient: Quick Set Mind Closer.

It used to be that people formed opinions and then kept an open mind. Opinions evolved and changed. New facts came to light and that influenced opinion. Indeed, other opinions were expressed and minds considered the new opinion, rejecting it, adopting it, or further modifying it.

All after some critical thinking.

I don't see much of that anymore.

I see the same opinions rooted in knee jerk reaction flogged endlessly. Things get reduced to their most elemental. Opposing ideas are no longer heard and considered. They're just rejected out of hand in the most dismissive, vitriolic, overheated fashion possible.

Reason has been replaced with volume. Debate has morphed into push back.

"If I am louder, I am righter."

And the loudest seem to become the opinion leaders. Not for reason, but simply for volume. Bleat the loudest and the sheep will follow.

Similarly, ossified opinion makes it easy to ascribe motive. When A or B or C or D happens, it is *always* because of Z. Never mind that it may actually have been because of Y or Q or S. Conventional wisdom (ossified opinion, virtually by definition) holds that is is always because of Z and therefor it always is.

Except it isn't. But no one seems to care anymore. Or even worse, someone attempts to show that it is really because of L, but since L doesn't fit conventional wisdom (ossified opinion, virtually by definition), the person pointing it out is deemed wrong and stoned in the square of public opinion. Or shunned.

Mob mentality.

Group think.

Lock step.

Gang loyalty.

Simplification.

Blind acceptance.

Ossified thinking.

This isn't aimed at any one group or posse.

I am gone for the rest of the day. Have fun playing with my thoughts and telling me how I should think.

Or why I should respect non thinking.

[YourUniqueDemocrat]

1. Agree. Everyone seems to know the exact explanation of events

Specially the supporters of a certain candidate I know.

[JTFrog]

15. Welcome back.

:hi:

[JTFrog]

29. Oops. See you next reincarnation!

:hi:

[stray cat]

2. Yes in fact its condemned by some

[havocmom]

3. The last few months? Oh, it goes back much further?

2000 would NEVER come close enough to steal without the the nation-wide breakdown of critical thought having pretty much been a done deal

[Stinky The Clown]

5. Good point ......

...... my OP was, to be honest, aimed at Democrats, who used to be a bastion of critical thinking. That's the loss that concerns me.

The 2000 election outcome is an excellent example of how the lack of critical thinking gets us to places we always come to regret.

[havocmom]

11. Yes, I share your concern that too many DEMS gave up thinking for fitting in with the mob

Giving up to get along instead of standing for something - we are seeing too much of that crap within our own ranks.

My daughter says she used to wonder how the people of Germany let a think like Hitler happen. And she adds she understands now, seeing it up close and personal in the US.

[JoFerret]

35. The combination of group think

and the two minute (make that endless) hate is disappointing.

[marions ghost]

4. gang loyalty

is how any president gets elected.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. I'm not just talking about campaigns

I'm talking about the out and out lack of critical thinking and the blind acceptance as fact the opinions of the loudest.

Just as an example - and NOT to debate it in this thread - "Saddam **has** to be taken out".

[havocmom]

14. What was the stat the other day? Something about 16% of science teachers being creationists?

Teachers. Science teachers. 16%! Had to happen, considering how many school boards across the nation have been pretty much taken over by fundies starting back in the 70s.

Then, with media consolidation came the propagandists of hate radio. So much easier to just let the brainwashing happen an parrot what one heard all the time than to actually THINK.

Constant pummeling by various stressors may play a part too. People are just fucking tired and all the constant stress is making it worse and worse. Can't sleep, can't think. Perhaps it's my tinfoil bonnet, but I do think a lot of the stress is manufactured and done with that purpose.

We're entering into another dark age and it is a particular class that is herding us there.

[mac2]

16. They live and were raised in Conservative country.

[havocmom]

20. So was Copernicus

Newton, di Vinci and a few other cats ;)

[bain_sidhe]

27. I agree about the "manufactured stress"

And Havocmom's reference to Hitler and wondering how it could happen reminded me of this quote from one of my favorite "how could it happen" books, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-1945 by Milton Mayer:

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’"

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

Maybe my tinfoil bonnet's too tight, but I see a LOT of parallels in this book with the events of the last 7 years.

More excerpts here, if you're interested: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

And to the OP's point. Critical thinking has been on the decline for at least 20 years, probably more like 30. I'd guess Reagan was the first flowering of the rule-by-creating-mobthink crowd. Now it's infected most of the people in the country, including many Democrats. But it has increased exponentially in the last seven years. My hubby, who's a left-leaning but apolitical college professor, has remarked on the changes in his students "just recently" (meaning the last 5 years or so). They don't think, and they don't WANT to think, and they are often righteously outraged when he marks them down for not thinking. Worse yet, their parents back them on it. "HOW DARE YOU ask my beautiful genius child to think!!!" (If they were typing it, I'm sure they'd add "I"m SERIES!!11!!" :eyes: )

[Lone_Star_Dem]

7. One person acting on their own guidance is an individual

One-hundred people acting on the guidance of one person is an army.

One of the things that make armies work is a group of people will commit acts an individual would never attempt.

[frickaline]

8. K&R - emotion can get the better of us all, its important to keep this in mind. (nt)

[existentialist]

9. This has been going on

forever, well, certainly for all of my adult life.


It's just been getting worse, and worse, and worse, and worse.

[madrchsod]

10. .good i can post stuff behind your back!

have a nice day....oh i agree with you.....:hi:

[no_hypocrisy]

12. It appears to me that neocons use obfuscation of the issues by means of

logical fallacies regularly and have developed the technique to an art form.

Here is a list of fallacies. You will be able to identify many of them in republican accusations and "defenses" of legitimate claims by non-republicans.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

Example: Fallacy: Ad Hominem

Description of Ad Hominem
Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:


Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A's claim is false.
And claim X is never analyzed for its particulars.

[mac2]

19. We've had over a year and a half of this "distraction" while

they destroy our treasury many generations out. They open our borders allowing drugs and criminals into our cities. They destroy our democracy before our eyes using "terrorism" as an excuse.

Change is "a comin" but it's not democratic or prosperity. It's Fascism of church and state...and tryanny.

[Auntie Bush]

21. That was well thought out reasoning.

Wish I had time to think/show some examples...maybe someone else will.

[Deja Q]

13. It's always been like that.

:shrug:

[bridgit]

17. After years now of the left watching g.w. bush & his handlers have their way

towing lock-step & blind devotion all around the arena floor; they finally feel they have their candidate in which they are enabled to behave likewise: lock-stepped & blindly devoted. So that now, as was the case with g.w. bush, critical thinking is no longer required. A recent thread praising KO's having taken over O'Reilly by even a slight margin in terms of market, can be seen as an indicator, that in world driven by such media considerations, AD dollars, and a M$M that sells not news to people but people to advertisers; too many on the left imo are now too pleased, and too often blindly so; that they have their 'left-wing' Bill O'Reilly.

[rock]

18. Nope

Although it's always been uncommon.

[kwenu]

22. True. My only criticism is why are we just now arriving at this conclusion.

From my perspective, it boils down to fundamentalism. Fundamentalism of every kind and stripe. That means conservative, liberal, religious, racial, ethnic and sexual. It is destroying the world. Anytime we get to the point where if a person or group of people become evil in our minds simply because they disagree with us, we are lead to being evil ourselves. This is not to say that there are no actions that are clearly evil, it's about savaging different thoughts and ideas.

[Auntie Bush]

23. That's a good list to print out and keep handy.

A good list for one to check before posting.

Have a fun day and take care of yourself. Bye..... :hi:

[GoesTo11]

24. Nope, it's a dead art.

[unblock]

25. too soon to tell. the republicans have relied on squelching critical thinking

it remains to be seem if democrats will bring it back.

if democrats have control of the white house and congress (actual control, not just a nominal majority) and they find it in their interest to keep america stupid, then we're all doomed.

[Muttocracy]

26. yes - and my attention span is too short to read your whole post!

:evilgrin:

[jumptheshadow]

28. It's on life support in this particular forum

One of the cool things about Obama now is that he is focusing on issues that require some courage. They are issues that require critical thinking, and by his example he has been showing Democrats to ignore the petty crap and focus on the real fights.

On this forum, however, both sides are endlessly repeating the same talking points over and over. They are so stifled with anger and the ego gratification of getting recs by preaching to the choir that they have lost all perspective.

It's time, maybe, for many people to take a brief break and to rejoin us when they are fresh again and ready to work towards winning the Presidential election.

[jumptheshadow]

30. Kick

[Stinky The Clown]

31. A kick for the evening shift

[hfojvt]

32. it was established in 2004 that you cannot change your mind

it's flip-flopping and you will be mocked for it.

[Swamp Rat]

33. Maybe

[shadowknows69]

34. A nation lobotomized by the media

Even people in the belly of the beast tried to warn us (Murrow) and it happened anyway.

[intaglio]

36. Critical thinking has, sadly, been a minority behavior

for years; if not throughout history. There have been brief periods, in various cultures, where such reasoning flowered but all too often it has been cut down.

Examples in no particular order

12th Century Sicily, Spring and Autumn period China, Themistoclean Athens, possibly early and mid period Republican Rome

[cali]

37. LOL.

"It used to be that people formed opinions and then kept an open mind. Opinions evolved and changed. New facts came to light and that influenced opinion. Indeed, other opinions were expressed and minds considered the new opinion, rejecting it, adopting it, or further modifying it."

Really? When and where?

[jumptheshadow]

38. Actually, there is some critical thinking going on at DU

One of the subforums has a very thought-provoking thread.... It had me looking up biographies and references for hours last night. There's very interesting stuff on this board if you look well beyond the mob scenes and the shallow talking points pumped out by both camps....