What if critical thinking is the root of our problems? One take, explained to me yesterday, is that critical thinking is like martial arts. We only know how to attack and to defend against thoughts. We’ve been trained as black belts in this way – always to be right, always to be critical.
Loving stories as a kid, a former English Professor explained his escape from the profession like this:
As I graded papers and facilitated class discussions, I was teaching criticism more and more – where a poem or essay would never survive to be “good”. And all the while I was telling, creating, and reading stories less and less.
There can be a long debate as to whether critical thinking really is the evil I’m setting it up to be. After all, without critical thinking who would we be, what would we learn? Would we all just be a bunch of hippies with no standards for human living? (I use the term hippies lovingly.)
Without judgment on this concept, I took a moment to look at the all disciplines and professions that I’ve inhabited. In philanthropy, all we do is come up with theories, buckets, and definitions that critique & change what’s already been written – as though we believe there will ever be some “right” answer on how we conduct our work. That there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and if we critically think hard enough, we’ll find it.
I’m totally complicit. I re-read some of my writing on philanthropy – writing with a critical eye for what so-and-so said about x, y, and z. Crafting a carefully worded rebuttal of how they are completely wrong and why I’m right. Even being polite enough to acknowledge a few good points on their thinking, only to leave the conclusion of my writing to dismantle their argument. Didn’t I actually get a masters degree in how to do this?
The big question that looms, does any of this critical thinking really solve problems, change the world, create empathy, show love, or acknowledge our shared humanity? What if instead, we approached problem-solving from a different point, “Hey, you don’t know the answer and neither do I. Let’s get to work.”
In the midst of all this critique, you’ve got to wonder if all we’ve really done is become really, really good at criticism.
And not so good at thinking.