What is critical thinking and what does this have to do with my criticisms of GroupThink and the resulting rise of Identity Politics?

How we think determines what we think. And this matters if we’re going to collectively turn the tide away from either this totalitarian ideology of GroupThink or its populist response, both of which are equally pernicious and destructive to our Western liberal democratic founding principles.

To understand just how important criticism and critical thinking by every citizen is to our liberal democracies, we need to look at how we think, which I often refer to as a methodology, a means to recognize the framing of issues and concerns all of us face and evaluate how this framing affects what we think. If this interests you at all and you wish to be a part of the solution, then sit back and follow my line of thought… critically!

Developing the tools necessary to think well has been a fundamental building block of ‘modern’ education, meaning the education of the common person by common standards to achieve shared core abilities… like reading, writing, and arithmetic. The way to do this has been to implement what is called ‘curriculum’, meaning a course of study. And all curriculum involved with learning these common standards involves teaching disciplined ways of thinking about how to demonstrate and use these common standards to useful effect.

At the core of disciplined thinking lies critical thinking. People involved in delivering curriculum education have been bombarded with this term for decades under the heading of ‘Best Practices’. For example, understanding how to manipulate quantities in a variety of ways – arithmetic – requires a shared standard of numeracy and all that involves. We typically use a Base10 system where individual names are given to individual quantities starting with nothing and adding a single digit with a unique name all the way to nine. After that, we add a column and repeat. This is a framework, a common standard, that has to be taught because each of us could use whatever Base system we want and have no clue what a named quantity might actually represent in reality. If, for example, I used a Base4 (0,1,2,3, add a column and repeat) and you used a Base10 (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,87,9, add a column and repeat), then my ’10’ would not be the same quantity as your ’10’ (a 10 in Base 4 would be equivalent to a quantity of ‘4’ digit in Base 10) and this is a problem for us because how we think about numeracy and what standards we use determines what we think. Fighting about the results and which one is ‘right’ in the case of using different Bases does not address the real problem caused by using different standards, using different framing. The same is true for critical thinking (and is also true for how we frame viewing our world through an ideology different from another, which I will talk about in a later post). And the core feature of critical thinking is understanding the vital role criticism plays. That is what is lacking in the rise of Identity Politics: not enough critical thinking because there is a general malaise against  accepting the role for legitimate criticism. Criticism has reached the point where it is being widely accepted to be the greatest vice, the greatest social taboo. (“You can’t say that because it’s Illegal! It causes Offense! Causes Hurt Feelings! Causes feeling Unsafe! Causes Hate! Causes Bigotry! Causes me to have to think, and be held accountable for my childish and churlish opinions and we must not allow that to stand!), no matter what is being criticized or how much something may be in need of criticism. Criticizing in public has become like committing a public sin. And there are growing legions of people who agree that such a public sin will not be tolerated with direct sanction.

Promoting critical thinking is supposed to be a central feature of Western education and is supposed to be refined from a public understanding throughout post secondary academics to arrive at a common standard for promoting discerning judgement. So what is ‘critical thinking’ and why raise its decline as an issue worth investigating in the context of the dangerous rise in power and influence of the Regressive/ctrl Left?

The quick answer is that I think there is not just a lack of legitimate criticism of what is going on with the standard of GroupThink (and the pernicious effects it causes when it is being inserted on and imposed into our collective lives) but a paucity for the average ‘educated’ person to pay its social demotion much mind at all.

What does criticism have to do with critical thinking? I hate to have to do this but we’re going to have to back up a second.

The terms ‘criticism’ and ‘critical’ share a common root, kriticos, which means ‘discerning judgement’, as well as kriterion which means ‘standards’. To engage critical thinking etymologically speaking implies the development of discerning judgement based on standards. This raises the next important question of what constitutes appropriate standards and this is where today’s education is a colossal failure.

Because reactive and subjective thinking tends towards narrowness of the immediate concern before us and relies on convenience for its central feature, we know that it is normal and all too human to engage in common fallacies, self-deception (“We must not fool ourselves, and we are the easiest person to fool,” said physicist Richard Feynman), prejudice, and an unwillingness to change opinions in order to justify the judgement we have rushed to embrace. These are all shortcuts to reduce the need to think too much, to be able to react quickly, which is then defended just as quickly and with just as little thought as necessary by rationalizations. Very often, the results are good enough to function in an ever-changing environment. I point out the rationalization aspect because this is a good indicator that little if any critical thinking has actually occurred and so we can catch ourselves when we turn to rationalizations and realize we’ve made this kind of shortcut and so should reduce our confidence in its product because we know we’ve followed the subjective route. (Perhaps my ’10’ and your ’10’ being different in meaning is not a partisan or moral problem at all but a shared failure establishing a common standard first.) Rationalization reveals the need for closer self monitoring because the standard has suddenly shifted. And we first need to get back to a common standard, a standard of merit, of truth value, of descriptive accuracy relative to reality against which the judgement can be independently evaluated and fully equipped with discernment.

How well do these typical and easy shortcut practices actually help us to determine the merit, the truth value, the descriptive accuracy of some idea or action?

Here’s where critical thinking is supposed to make its mark: exercising critical thinking is an intentional and disciplined attempt to form an objective judgement by evaluating BOTH merits and faults of an idea or action independent of our immediate concerns and then allowing reality to arbitrate our final selection. This is much harder to do because it is intentional and requires attention to independent evaluation. This requires discipline of mind. Exercising critical thinking means we intentionally shift our attention away from the reactive judgement we want to form quickly and, instead, insert an objective consideration of both faults and merits of some idea or action. This is how we discern the merits of a judgement independent of our own convenience, biases, and prejudices: by being able to first describe both the strengths and weaknesses, both the faults and merits, of an idea or action in order to try our best to compare and contrast which objective judgement best serves the merit, the truth value, and the descriptive accuracy needed by checking in with reality.

Does my ’10’ and your ’10’ reflect the same quantity that we can then show to each other in reality? No. Reality will indicate two different quantities. We can correct this problem only if we first agree to share a common standard. Reality arbitrates that this is an effective way for both of us to accurately express the meaning of quantities. We can utilize numeracy with common meaning only if we agree to use the same standards.

By using reality to arbitrate our critical thinking means we can be held rationally accountable for the judgement we select. Perhaps you recognize the skeleton of this form of training to establish a shared standard from your own education (all those test questions you faced asking you to demonstrate some ability to ‘compare and contrast’, ‘consider the strengths and weaknesses’, and so on).

Who has time for all that when we face a thousand decisions a day?

This is where education is supposed to play a central role: the training of the mind to utilize discerning judgement quickly and easily using the same standard of merit, of truth value, of reality’s right to arbitrate our beliefs about it, to practice this objective and considered response before our subjective concerns can get in our path and divert us… in the same way a martial artist is trained by disciplined exercises to have the body respond quickly and easily and objectively before our subjective concerns can get in our path and divert us.

What does this have to do with Identity Politics?

The lack of critical thinking has everything to do with the rise of the Regressive/ctrl Left because of the failure of the common person to understand that how we think about social issues determines what we think. We have collectively moved away from using a common standard necessary for critical thinking and replaced the justifications for Identity Politics and all its various ideological grievance handmaidens brimming with feel-good rationalizations that make sense only if we shift away from merit, from truth value, from allowing reality to arbitrate our judgements to create discernment. And the sign post for this is the rise of rationalizations… rationalizations used to justify the opposite of what is said to being supported, such as saying that one must ‘protect’ basic common rights and common freedoms by denying it to selected others… such as  censoring, deplatforming, disinviting, accusation-as-sufficient-grounds-for-dismissal, mobbing and so on against those who try to use critical thinking and criticism as the means to demonstrate the ideology’s lack of merit, its lack of truth value, its refusal to allow reality to arbitrate the rationalizations if unfavourable. The inversion between the stated goals and the means to attain them is another key aspect that reveals GroupThink hard at work.

What we need is to return to the same critical standard and objectively evaluate this GroupThink ideology. How we think really does determine what we think. It’s past time to revisit this maxim and apply it now even after we see the Regressive/ctrl Left’s ideology’s antithesis – populism – take further root where Western secular liberal democracies once were dominant but are now in peril. And that responsibility falls to each and every one of us.