Consider the choices you have made in your life and ask yourself which of your decisions were predominantly influenced by society and which were made only because you wanted it. Everything is about decisions, should I change career? should I get married? should I travel? Since we wake up early in the morning, we need to make decisions about what clothes to wear, what to eat, etcetera. We take for granted all our decisions but what about if we started questioning the way we live, the way we make decisions, and challenging our perspective to see the strange situation within a normal or familiar situation to you.
Analyzing the strange situation within a normal context or familiar situations forces us to change the lens through which we see things. For example, in Canada it is normal to see that all people are allowed to be free. Nevertheless, decades ago, slavery was a very normal and common situation that only ended when people started questioning why some people are not allowed to be free. We need to change the perspective of every familiar situation, and it is the only way to improve and transform things into better things. As the famous musician Bob Dylan stated in his song blowing in the wind “how many years can some people exist, before they allow to be free? and, how many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just does not see?”. Putting the lyrics in context, we can see that Bob Dylan is questioning people’s freedom by using critical thinking.
Using critical thinking helps you to acknowledge the strange in the familiar of all situations in your life. Critical thinking requires practice and takes time to build. Moreover, involves a process of objectively analyzing and conceptualizing through observation, experiences, reflection, and communication. We need to develop and use critical thinking to analyze complex aspects that are happening in society right now. For example, the advances in technology innovation have been giving us a lot of benefits to our lives but at the same time technology evolution can trigger our lives in the upcoming future.
In the book Brave New World, the author Aldous Huxley described a utopian society where technology is used to genetically alter human features such as physical characteristics and intelligence. Babies are born in test tubes and are controlled in labs, some of them are alphas and leaders, and some of them are workers. Everyone has a specific role in society and the education in schools encourages those roles, there are no crimes and no social class conflicts. Seems to be a perfect world. The complexity starts when despite the perfect world created, some people started questioning the rules, the abusive use of technology, and its negative impacts on the social structure. How far are we from this utopian society story? Developing critical thinking will help you in any aspect of your life such as the workplace and communicating with others. To sum up, put into practice your critical thinking and do not leave anything for granted.
To do a critical thinking exercise watch the video posted!
Brenda Avila
