It’s Critical

As I’ve watched the development of the Covid-19 storm, from my little hidey-hole on the high plains.  I began to wonder, what happened to critical thinking and critical analysis? When did we lose the capacity to evaluate the evidence and discern manipulation, error, hypocrisy and bias? It does not take a close examination of the masking debacle to realize, the facts don’t support the actions. 

The science advisors and CDC have flip-flopped erratically around the issue, as they are instructed to manipulate the narrative, depending on which direction the powers that be, want to frighten the herd. If the nation was full of critical thinkers, would narrative presented as fact still work? Propaganda works for awhile, even with the few critical thinkers that remain. It is designed to connect with rigidly constructed belief systems and the subcortical Lizard Mind, by firing up your emotional response. How many of the ten commandments of critical thinking have been violated by the propaganda we have been subjected to?

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Essential Rules Of Critical Thinking

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Critical thinking, at least at the collective level is a function of our evolution and started to seriously erode around the same time as our evolutionary trajectory began to reverse; in the early 1970’s. By that time, the investment that America’s two richest billionares of all time, (adjusted for inflation) began to bear fruit. Rockefeller and Carnegie, posing as philanthropists invested four and a quarter billion dollars, (adjusted for inflation) creating the General Education Board. 

“Never confuse education with intelligence.” —Albert Einstein

The GED was not about teaching kids to be artists, authors, philosophers or critical thinkers. It wasn’t a nation of thinkers they wanted. They wanted a nation of workers. Public Education does not encourage critical thinking. In fact it has been designed to suppress dissent and originality. To indoctrinate a population to submit to authority. And by 1971, the nation had already become a nation of workers, instead of thinkers. The aim was not to spread enlightenment but to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same dumbed down, safe level. A standard citizenry to take their place in the workforce.

Just the facts, Ma’am.

Numerous studies of college classrooms show that the students are not learning or at least not learning to learn. Almost half their time is spent on lectures and rote memory teaching exercises, not developing cognitive skills. They are achieving little connection and depth within or across subjects. Even in testing, the standard by which we judge education emphasizes recall or memorization of course material rather than  intellectual stimulation. Do we even know what critical thinking looks like after a century of indoctrination? Being lectured to and having the “facts” pounded into our heads.

Here we are 7 generations out from the original Robber Baron’s plan to indoctrinate a population into being tax slaves and loving it. A new crop of megalomaniacal billionares posing as philanthropists, attempting to close the loop, to create the ultimate herd, on the Animal Farm. Will they succeed through their latest campaign or will we awaken and start thinking critically again. To date, in the Great Wide World, not one totalitarian campaign has suceeded for long, as our desire for freedom lives deep within us.

I never would have imagined back in the seventies that we would be on the edge of dystopia in my lifetime, but here we are. Now what? The best advice I can offer is to practice “Critical Thinking.” Make a copy Russell’s Essential Rules and keep them close. Originality and dissent are attributes to be practiced, not reasons to be incarcerated. It’s critical, folks!