Thinking Critically vs. Critical Thinking

In my home town there was a guy, Gloomy Gus who just complained and complained all the time. The weather was lousy, his family were no-good-niks, the community was dying, the economy was collapsing and the sky was falling in.

Then there was the other person, Polly Ponder, who looked at the weather a figured wheher it would be a good day to work in her garden or to do office work. If she saw her children struggling with homework, she would stop and help them understand it. If there was contention about something in the community she would work with others to try to amicably solve the problem. She didn’t buy stuff unless she could afford them, except for major expenditures like buying a house in which case she would look for the best interest rates and reliable bankers. And she understood national economics didn’t work in the same way personal economics did. She didn’t believe the sky was falling in.

Critical thinkers are those folk who put their intellect and analytic skills to work to solve problems. Critical is not a negative but a positive method of doing things productively.

But it is a lot easier to just complain and scare others with frightening thoughts. Sadly I believe that is the nature of politics today. We have a vast number of fear mongers who try to frighten the population saying unless things are done their way, all will end in disaster, with practically no explanation of why what they want work.  Booga booga politics. And because of a media system that works most often superficially and also uses booga boogaism to sell its news that type of thinking is what we are most exposed to and buy into.

When I read The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama I found profound work in critical thinking. I felt this man is really smart, has done his homework, has a workable plan for the good of the nation and most of all he was hopeful and positive. However, when I ask, most people tell me they haven’t read his book but he is a no goodnik anyway. And, unfortunately, as President dealing with all the fear mongering that goes on and dealing with the problems he inherited, he has less and less chance to work on his politics of hope. I am impressed with his ability to remain on point in spite of the media and the nay sayers.

And I think there are also very good critical thinkers in the Republican parties. Unfortunately because of the extremism and criticizers that seem to have taken control of that party I think they have little chance to get their points across, or even stand up for principles they believe in.

I know on my bad days I think the sky is falling in and I become must one of the mob of criticizers. But on my good days I know God is in heaven and all is right with the world, or that God has given us the ability to make the world as right as we can, and that hope will win out and I work on my critical thinking skills to make things better. Even if it only means writing my ideas down in a blog.