I just read a blog post about how machine guns that fire through propellers on air planes were created. One of the first commenters didn’t understand the value of the post [so I left a comment explaining one particular application for him]. One of the things that gets me over and over is that as a human being I am challenged to always cull through the massive amount of information, experience, and emotionally charged things in life and think about what they’re there for. If someone is always expecting a pre-processed bit of useful wisdom, a report culled from data, or an instruction book in life: they’re not going to get farther than that. Instead, as a responsible, brain-gifted humans people should be pushing for a consistent method for interpreting life through.
Critical thinking is a great part of what that means. Being able to grasp language, comprehend stories (and their morals), understanding humor, and grasping the depth of emotion that a story holds are critical to thinking. I don’t fault the commenter for their not understanding what was posted on that blog, but it did cause me to think a lot about how important critical thinking is to me. I hope that you are able to take that away from this blog. Sometimes I’m critical, sometimes my posts are just fluff, and other times I have written very intense, highly opinionated pieces. But in the end this blog exists, in part, to encourage folks to think. If you don’t think, someone else will do it for you*.
* And if you don’t understand the problems that can lead to, there’s probably not much hope for you 😉