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Patriotism Requires Citizens to Question Government

When our daughter attended Brebeuf Preparatory School, she was challenged to think critically. Apparently, that is no longer a requirement, based on the astounding comments made in a Sept. 14 'Fresh Thoughts' by Brebeuf student Barrett Tenbarge ... Considering myself a staunch patriot, I find his comments offensive and vulgar, stating that we who dare question our government are unpatriotic. (It reminds me, eerily, of my years living abroad under various dictatorships where unquestioning loyalty was required.) Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. must be high-fiveing over the fact that they've fooled him ... He apparently does not know that this war was begun on false pretenses and has resulted in the loss of tens, but more likely, hundreds of thousands of lives, and unbelievable destruction to the cities and towns of an innocent country. We have created martyrs for generations to come ... I am comforted by the fact that most people of Tenbarge's age would find his comments as offensive as I do. There is hope for America, as long as we can get patriots back in charge of the government and return to the teaching of critical thinking in every classroom." -- Read the Full Article

Commentary
by Hunter Finch

Unlike dialectic argument aimed at getting different points of view to a working concept towards resolving real world problems, debate -- on a stump before partisan listeners, on TV before a viewing demographic, or in an editorial column before a following of loyal readers -- has an entirely different purpose:  to win over the acceptance of your audience even when your position may be wrong. Transferring histrionics, stage presence, and effective rhetorical delivery into memorable sound bytes and linguistic zingers generally takes precedence over the merits or integrity of any logical constructs that may be presented in debate formats. Manipulative tactics, fallacious techniques, and visceral "hot buttons" are intentionally called upon to "stir emotions" and to "trick" us in the audience into believing one or another argument makes more sense than another. While critical thinking is necessary to prepare for and to participate effectively in debate, it is usually more necessary for those of us who might be in the listening audience. This the case, the social phenomenon of "patriotism" plays to our highly-charged emotional and sociocentric, as well as to our egocentric, belief systems making open and critical objectivity in dialectic discussion near impossible. As futile as attempting to defend one's best intentions, one's character, one's god, one's gender, or one's loyalty called into question by an unpopular question, patriotism is a social bonding mechanism that makes us feel good about ourselves. When someone steps outside the boundaries of what bonds us to each other, critical discussion becomes impossible. Consider the phenomenon of patriotism, which exists throughout the world. Wherever we might live, our leaders, our historians, and our institutions create histories -- as Dr. Richard Paul in this year's International Conference on Critical Thinking keynote address points out -- "to make us look much better than we are and to take those who have come into conflict with us and represent them as worse than they were and are. In other words, patriotic history is dishonest history that makes us unjustifiably feel good about ourselves. This is what most societies want of their historians; 'Tell us about the past so we can see how heroic we are.' Fine and good, but what does that imply about others. If we are the chosen people, then everyone else is not chosen. If we are number one, then everyone else is below us. If we're the most important, then others are unimportant or of lesser importance."  So, when one considers the purpose of building consensus for just causes under calls to patriotic unity, it may be truly said the sincerest form of patriotic expression, even when initially socially unpopular, is a process that tollerates the open and critical dissent which potentially exposes us to better actionable options behind which we might more appropriately unify. Without specifics on points made in Tenbarge's "Fresh Thoughts," we are left to speculate specifically on what the debate is about. The author appears to be responding to a popular but often misplaced notion that dissent, by definition, is not in the best interest of the country. At the same time, we are left to wonder specifically what he is saying when he speaks of "false pretenses."  Isn't that an oxymoron?

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Catholics Need Critical Thinking to Effectively Evangelize
CatholicCitizens.Org -- September 18, 2007
by Catholic Media Coalition and Les Femmes, The Women of Truth -Mary Ann Kreitzer

"Of all the skills necessary for Catholics to survive and evangelize in the modern world, critical thinking ranks near the top of the list. False ideas bombard one from the time he rises and turns on the radio for the morning rush-hour report until he heads for bed after the eleven o'clock news. In between he's constantly assaulted by messages telling him how to eat, wash, dress, and think. Politicians, newsmen, columnists, and talk show hosts try to form his opinions often feeding him slanted stories and false information. To fight the culture of the lie Catholics need to be able to reason effectively, recognize logical fallacies and false arguments, construct good responses, and defend the truth. But to defend truth, one needs the ability to sift through data that's been twisted and spun to find the truth to defend. That's easier said than done in a world of virtual reality." -- Read the Full Article

Commentary
by Hunter Finch

Critical thinking is indeed at "the top of the list" for people of all religious as well as secular persuasions. The critical issue isn't whether we independently and collectively believe things, but rather with the why, what and how we allow ourselves to believe things. This article provides a very close look at the nature of legacy beliefs comparing the "legend" and the "historical facts" through which we need to reexamine and reconcile our former understandings of the true character of Abraham Lincoln. In so doing, it illustrates a common burden we share as the curious, open, fair-minded, independent-thinking individuals we aspire to be:  that of overcoming and reconciling what we have long held to be the "truth" with that which is, in fact, the Truth. Critical thinkers approach such self-discovery with open-but-skeptical curiosity and intense intellectual humility because recognizing what one actually knows, as well as what one doesn't actually know, is at the crux of being able to intellectually serve reason focused on critical objectivity. Evangelizing is most effective from within this context:  when it enlightens the critical intellectual path upon which others can independently confront, reconcile, and temper their own legacy beliefs with reality.  Imposing concepts for "absolute truths" on critical thinkers, especially when such truths are based on "arguments by authority," become counter productive. To the extent the seminal concept of critical thinking serves as a tool for independent deliberation on any path, it will make anyone's journey to discovery all that more rewarding.

The Problem Isn't Generic 'Religious Extremism'
The New York Times (On Faith) -- September 11, 2007
by George Weigel

"Six years after 9/11, we certainly should have learned that the threat that made itself lethally clear that day was not generic -- 'religious extremism' -- but very specific: global jihadism ... Nor ought we think that what we 'say to' the jihadists will have much of a soothing effect on their passions, as if they were overwrought teenagers and we were high-school guidance counselors armed with reassuring words and a prescription for Prozac ... Indeed, I suspect that what we say to each other, as Americans, is much more important on this anniversary than what we say to the jihadists. And what we ought to be telling each other today, on 9/11+6, is what we cannot not know ... We can't not know the identity of the enemy -- global jihadism -- and what that enemy believes. That is, we can't not know that global jihadism teaches that it is the duty of every Muslim to use any means available to advance the prospects of a world that acknowledges the sovereignty of Allah over all aspects of life and that lives under Shari'a law. (That the vast majority of the world's Muslims do not hold this view is both true and irrelevant.) ... We can't not know that the jihadists read the history of the past 1,350 years through the prism of their theological convictions, not through the lens of Westrern progressivist concepts of how-things-will-turn-out ... We can't not know that the jihadists are carefully monitoring our cultural and political morale, eager to find the first signs of the weakness they detected in the late 1990s, which emboldened them to attempt an enormity like 9/11 ... We can't now know that this struggle against global jihadism is for the long haul. The issues it poses will be on the next President's desk on January 21, 2009, and on the desk of every President for the foreseeable future. And we can't not know that anyone who doesn't understand this has no claim on the presidency ... We can't not know that inter-religious dialogue cannot be an exchange of banal pleasantries but must focus on helping Islam assimilate the positive achievements of the Enlightenment, including the separation of religious and political authority and the idea of religious freedom as an inalienable human right.."-- Read the Full Article

Commentary
by Hunter Finch

”The Problem" isn't that we can't now see, but that we refuse to admit, all absolute religious and secular belief systems have blind spots with inherent potentials for "non-generic" extreme interpretations. Nobody takes issue with global jihadism being the direct cause of the attacks on September 11, 2001; nor that when manipulated, that the Qur'an can be interpreted to specifically call for jihad against "infidels," nor with what should be obvious, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims don't entertain that perverted line of reasoning even though their theocratic institutions in recent generations of stifling open questioning and dissent have predisposed them to it. Yet if, as the author seems to suggest, this problem is not with "generic religious extremism" but with Islam pure and simple, he is blind to this inherent problem in all religions and cults. This is no time to point fingers at each other or to proselytize in behalf of alternative leaps of faith. Each of us is born into social environments with legacy beliefs and belief systems. We inadvertently come to accept many beliefs we really haven't thought much about. As a responsibility to ourselves and to each other, we all have a moral responsibility to independently reconcile and integrate our beliefs with real world working abstracts of "the truth" as we individually see it, as opposed to accepting the edicts, mandates, mantras and pretense in behalf of the truth that others would impose on us if they could. In other words, everybody has a right to say and believe what they want, but nobody has a right not to think about what they believe. Yes, the Enlightenment which gave rise to values of democratic and open critical dissent among and between belief systems was and continues to be a rich deterrent to most religious extremism. It needs to be revisited not just by Muslims, but by all people, societies, governments and their religious institutions, so that blind faith never gets the upper hand over critical reason as it did on 9/11/01.

Hero Worship is Incompatible with Critical Thought
Cyprus Mail -- September 9, 2007

"At the end of last month, the Education Ministry sent out a circular to the heads of all state schools setting out the three main targets of the new school year which starts this week. The main target was the development of inter-cultural dialogue in schools, as a way of cultivating greater tolerance and acceptance of other cultures ... The European Parliament and European Council declared 2008 the European Year of Inter-Cultural Dialogue, pointed out the circular, adding that cultivating a multi-cultural conscience among children was an imperative, given the growing number of foreign students at state schools and the changing cultural composition of our society. A list of sensible suggestions as to how this could be achieved were included in the circular ,,, Another target for the new year was to make schools more inclusive by making each class cater for the individual needs, skills and interests of each child so that all students could feel a sense of achievement and nobody would feel excluded or marginalised. These are commendable objectives, in line with European values and current educational thinking, but whether schools are in a position to achieve them at such short notice, without any time to prepare, is another matter ... What is important, for now, is that the ministry has recognised the need for schools to adapt to the changes our society is undergoing. But the third and final aim makes a mockery of this superficial modernising drive, as it exposes the government’s real thinking on education. It will focus on “acquainting children with the life and work of Archbishop Makarios III”, as 30 years from his death were marked this year! ...The suggestions made by the ministry for acquainting children with Makarios defy belief. Here are some of them: “Every school to organise an exhibition of works inspired by the life and work of Makarios; research to be carried out about artistic works that were inspired by Makarios; projects to be written about the life and work of Makarios; artistic events to be staged, devoted to Makarios; magazines and newspapers published by schools to be devoted to the memory of Makarios' ...The Makarios-worshipping aim of the ministry is anti-educational and exposes the true intentions of the government regarding state schools, which is, quite blatantly, to discourage free and critical thinking. And we wonder how the ministry mandarins hope to achieve the other two aims of the school year – multi-cultural conscience and inclusiveness – which require open-mindedness, when dogmatic thinking remains an educational ideal." -- Read the Full Article

Commentary
by Hunter Finch

It's human to socially gravitate towards authoritative leadership on ideas and issues seeking our own acceptance in the notoriety of others especially when what we have least in common is "critical thinking." Acculturation within and across societies, cultures and religions constantly pulls us into intellectual assumptions and positions of acceptance in our associations with others, which need continual reconciliation. In fact, when we build our own convictions around the thinking of our heroes, when our thinking becomes their thinking by proxie, we work at cross-purposes with the fundamental concepts and cadre of best practices of critical thinking. This article illustrates a classic example of where, as institutions, we precondition our intent to "think critically" like the leaders we admire thereby undercutting our very ability to begin the critical thinking process. When the collective thinking of our institutions on one hand embrace "critical thinking" but on the other impose whose critical thinking we must embrace, it becomes obvious they either don't understand the fundamental cadres and best practices of independent thought or that they intentionally are out to indoctrinate and brainwash us in their "thinking," albeit, beliefs. Voluntary acceptance of such beliefs, without the intellectual work of independent critical thinking processes, is not "thinking." All social institutions, religious as well as secular, are inclined towards telling us what to think, not how to think. Our individual ability to see and think independently and critically is our ownly defense against this tendency.

The Norwegian, the Scotsman and the Japanese
Imomus (Blog) -- September 7, 2007

"A Norwegian, a Scotsman and four Japanese women walk into a Berlin restaurant. In between the sesame chicken and the panacotta two questions about Japan come up. The Norwegian, an artist, has been to Korea several times and Japan once. During the course of workshops with art students he's found it very hard to get them to do "critical thinking" -- for him, the beginning of creativity. What he finds puzzling, though, is how amazingly creative Asian countries are, despite this. They come out with the equipment we all use daily, with the most imaginative animation series, computer games, and so on. So how do they do it? The Norwegian also wants to know about the state of the Japanese art world. Is it healthy and thriving? ...  The ball's in the Scotsman's court. I take a deep breath, a bite of chicken, a swig of white beer, and start with the art world question. Japan's art market is underdeveloped, I say. There are some "pop stars" like Murakami and Nara, who've mostly made their names outside Japan. Inside Japan (a bit like Berlin), there aren't really serious art collectors. Inside Japan, people like Murakami and Nara make their money by doing corporate identity (Vuitton, Roppongi Hills) or mass-producing souvenirs. It's a bit like Andy Warhol's statement that he'd be happy for people to have his pictures printed on the side of plastic shopping bags. In Japan, it's really like that. Art is collapsed into the mass market. Galleries are often in department stores, and often show what we'd think of as commercial work; record sleeves, airline advertising. But also there's the wider perspective that Japan doesn't really have a tradition of high art separated from design, crafts, practical things, commerce. That idea of "fine art" is a Western import. And there's no point in accusing Japanese artists of 'selling out'. When Nara makes a puppy-shaped alarm clock, he's distributing his work through the radically flat social structure of Japan much the way Warhol said he'd like to ...  As for critical thinking, that too is a Western way of looking at things. We in the West (in places like Scotland and Norway) have a metaphysical tradition which encourages us to think we can step outside of social contexts and judge things from a place of security, objectively. What we don't see is that what we call 'critical thinking' isn't objective or critical at all -- it's all tied up with assumptions we inherit from Plato and protestantism, the idea that you can say 'No!' and that this radical 'No!' and the 'outside' it comes from is where everything good starts. Asian societies have a different underpinning, a Confucian one, which sees the maverick, the loner, the outsider as a loser. For those societies, there is no safe or objective 'outside'. Radical affirmation takes the place of radical dissent; the 'yes' wins over the 'no', the 'we' over the 'me'. You innovate not by trying to divorce yourself from others, but by joining a team. It is this team or family (Kaikai Kiki, Murakami's organization, would be an example) that makes everything possible, including expressions of originality ... The paradox you quickly reach here is that Western-style 'critical thinking' is actually so endorsed by such central institutions (corporations, the academy, the media), is paid such daily lip service by educators and facilitators and team leaders, that it's become the most conformist, obedient, hierarchical and unoriginal thing you could do. As I sang in my song 'Robocowboys', there's so many insiders on the outside / I think it's beginning to be the inside / there's so many mavericks off the beaten track / they're beating a track to my door / and i'm beating them back with a board. And so, all over the West, a kind of theatre of the absurd is played out in colleges and workplaces daily; the moment when some teacher, team-leader or other authority figure commands a bunch of cowed students or employees to 'think critically' on cue. Shouting at them to 'get out of the box', he actually crams them into one ... At that moment in the conversation a sort of miracle occurred. Naoko Ogawa, a Japanese woman who'd been very quiet up until that point, produced a plastic-bound portfolio from her case and handed round a series of clear-wrapped cards. On these were mounted her 'jewelry' -- but it wasn't like jewelry we'd ever seen before. Naoko makes small aluminium rectangles with rounded corners and traditional Japanese kimono patterns printed on them. As the text on each card explains, you crush these metal leaves to your clothing, 'either destroying or changing it'. There's only a limited number of times you can clasp the crushed metal to the crushed cloth beneath before the aluminium fatigues and begins to crack. At that point, Naoko says, you should throw the metal sheet away and buy a new one ... The pieces themselves -- each one is unique, and in a packet you get three or four, in assorted patterns and colours -- were very beautiful. I'm not normally interested in jewelry at all (just the other day I was telling Hisae I can't understand people who stand in front of jeweler's windows gawping at silver and gold rings and necklaces), but Naoko's pieces were just so original and so attractive that I really wished I could afford the €118 she was charging for each packet. It was also a very Japanese proposition; the way the card was laid out, with a strip of pictures along the top showing, on a neutrally-dressed woman's torso, how to attach the metal tabs (the photos were very frontal in a Mark Borthwick sort of way), the rather conceptual, quirky yet unpretentious instructions (a bit like early 1960s Yoko Ono text pieces), the trad kimono patterns of the tabs themselves ... Naoko was typically self-deprecating about her work (if being a maverick is the Western conformity, being self-deprecating is the Japanese boasting); 'I haven't presented them very well,' she said. She told us she'd come to Berlin because she wanted to work with Bless, the amazing fashion design team on Mulackstrasse who do conceptual jewelry (they'll sell you customized designer USB cables!). After she'd interned for them for a while, Bless told her she should set up on her own. I'd love to direct you to a website where you can see or buy her stuff, but she doesn't have one ...The Norwegian's questions were answered much better by the Japanese woman's work than by the Scotsman's waffle. Here was something that presented itself, without big claims, in an artisanal tradition, something you could buy in a shop rather than a gallery. And yet its originality could easily match and outstrip that of your average work of art. The instructions printed on the packet asked the user to rethink his or her relationship with clothes and jewelry. The odd beauty of the results would spark conversations wherever the aluminium was worn. 'That's pretty amazing,' people would say, and their way of thinking would be subtly freshened." -- Read the Full Article

Commentary
by Hunter Finch

This slice of life narrative clearly brings to the fore a range of paradoxes and assumptions, premises and pretense that frequently appear in discussions about "critical thinking," where critical thought by name becomes its own self-serving end as opposed to a tool for rendering definition, structure, insight, objectivity and understanding to other contextual domains; and to the wide diversity of contributions made by different thinkers within those domains. As what poses for critical thinking is commoditized and "collapses into the mass market," it becomes too easy for us to pull the critical thinking label out of our back pockets and slap it onto our non-examined opinions in self-endorsement. (For example, "I used 'critical thinking' to reach this conclusion. Therefore, you must accept it.")  As, the term's use becomes less specific, more ambiguous and vague, it also becomes less understood and valued. One needs always to ask first, "Just what do you mean by "critical thinking?  "Tell me how this line of thinking is constructed?"

Critical Thought in Painfully Short Supply
HeraldNet -- September 2, 2007
by James McCusker

Everett, WA — "The rock band AC/DC has never felt the need to disclose the origin of its name or why it was selected. But 'AC/DC' was once routinely attached to the many radios and household appliances that were wired to operate on either direct or indirect current. The term was used so much in advertising that it became part of our language ... The need to accommodate two kinds of electric power in households and businesses came about largely because of a dispute between two creative giants: Thomas Edison and Nicholas Tesla. Edison believed that direct current, DC, made more sense because it was less complicated. Tesla believed that alternating current, AC, was better because it allowed efficient, lower cost, electrical power transmission ... Edison eventually realized that Tesla was right, of course, but not before his company had installed huge amounts of generating and transmission equipment especially in the New York City area. And since electrical equipment doesn't wear out quickly, direct current was still in operation in the Big Apple long after the city and the rest of the country had standardized on alternating current. Consolidated Edison didn't cut off its last commercial DC customers more than 1,500 of them until the end of 2005 ... Because New York City was the earliest mass market for consumer durables, production economics dictated that it was cost effective to manufacture radios and appliances to operate on either AC or DC rather than to make separate ones for each power source. The 'AC/DC' label was here to stay, at least long enough to fuel some memorable rock concerts ... The dispute between Edison and Tesla was prolonged by their differences in what we now call critical thinking. They were both clearly geniuses, but Edison was more the practical inventor, largely self-schooled and not well prepared to evaluate the mathematical complexity involved in the theory behind alternating current. Because of his education in math and physics, Tesla was ... Critical thinking is becoming a significant workplace issue. A recent survey of human resource executives undertaken by the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas asked the question: 'What skills do entry level job-seekers lack the most?' As we might guess, 45 percent of those interviewed cited written communications. But over a quarter of the executives 27 percent said 'critical thinking skills are where entry-level workers need the most preparation' ... Critical thinking plays a role in what happened when Rob Oxoby published his wonderful parody of economics research. Oxoby is a professor of economics at the University of Calgary, and in May of this year, as a joke, he wrote a discussion paper entitled, 'On the Efficiency of AC/DC: Bon Scott vs. Brian Johnson' ... The paper was in the usual format of such papers, including the weighty language that indicated that it took itself far too seriously. But its premise, that the efficiency of the lead singers of the rock band, the late Bon Scott and his successor, Brian Johnson, could be measured by economics techniques using a classroom experiment, was so preposterous as to be funny ... It was ironic, and funny, that one of those caught up in the hoax was 'Freakonomics' economist Steven Levitt, who has been very successful at alloying economics with pop culture and other everyday applications. But while Levitt did take the paper seriously, he is no dummy he recognized its ideas as bogus even if he didn't get the joke ... Exactly why critical thinking skills are in such decline isn't known, but we do know that they are important. Certainly we owe much of our current difficulties in Wall Street and the housing market to the near-absence of critical thinking by investors, lenders, and home buyers alike. As our economy becomes more complex and interdependent, critical thinking skills become, well, critical to our prosperity. It's time to stop fooling ourselves about this educational failure and fix it." -- Read the Full Article

Commentary
by Hunter Finch

Here's an electrifying account into the history of AC/DC as first encountered by Thomas Edison and Nicholas Tesla that laments today's short supply of critical thinking in the workforce and which also provides some comic relief grounded in today's culture of "head bangers." Rob Oxoby's parody of using economics research to demonstrate comparable efficiencies between rock musicians is not without precedent in the classroom. As a tactic to determine if students are critically engaged in their work, teachers have on occasion been known to formulate problems on tests for which there are no determinable answers and to concoct wild theories for which there are no foundations.