On critical thinking

Think it's not illegal, Yet.
Think, It’s not illegal, Yet.

Found this post on my Facebook page from back in July, 2012.

What’s sad is, while I thought it was an issue then, it has gotten even worse, and is reminiscent of discussions I find myself having daily.

July 14, 2012

From my vantage point we are experiencing the unprecedented death of critical thinking in the public school systems, in corporate America, and society as a whole.

It seems we no longer teach children to think critically, rather we teach them to be “yes men” (used in a gender neutral sense). We teach them to go with the flow, to not rock the boat.

In corporate America, we want to raise leaders, but we want those leaders to do what they’re told, and not ask questions. We want them to succumb to the collective “group think” of the masses. We discourage individualism, and punish innovation.

I have been so recently fed up with the lack of critical thought process in our world and the self-destructive nature of society that I picked up the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and have turned to it, to read it again, at least as another intellectual to commiserate with (I have thoroughly enjoyed some of her other books).

I thought I would leave you with a quote, and then ask you if you sit back and think about it, does this reflect your experience too?

“[you are a] brilliant child who has not seen enough of life to grasp the full measure of human stupidity. I’ve fought it all my life. I’m very tired. . . . Intelligence? It is such a rare, precarious spark that flashes for a moment somewhere among men, and vanishes. One cannot tell its nature, or its future . . . or its death. . . .”