Silencing the Critics

Critical thinking and criticism are not the same thing. Critical thinking is the examination of something laid before us…usually an idea...to determine validity and it is mostly internal. Criticism is the outward expression of our conclusion based on critical thought.

At least that’s what I would like it to be.

Critical thinking is what we do when we feel something – because we are emotional beings – and we hold it up against reality. We hold a mirror up to our reflexive notions and consider whether they align with our values. This, of course, also requires examination and clarification of our values and a recognition of our imperfect interpretation of reality…but that discussion is for a different day.

Constructive criticism is the expression of any disapproval which results from the above process and can only be done well if the critic acknowledges the humanity of the other people involved. The criticism that we have come to accept omits all of the consideration, reflection, and humanity extracting disapproval that is based on the immediate and unfiltered perceptions of the critic and the shaming of the messenger.

This makes me feel yucky. Therefore it is yucky. And the person who said it is yucky too.

Criticism without critical thinking is just like handing someone a lump of coal and calling it a diamond.

“The medium is the message,” or so said Marshall McLuhan. If this is true, and the medium through which most of our political messages are received is the internet, then what we are receiving is often impersonal (faceless), incomplete (140 characters or a meme), and in our own voice (as we read it to ourselves). And it is upon these messages that we are defining ourselves and others.

We have grown to believe that saying exactly what we think at the exact moment we think it somehow equates to truth.

“He says what he thinks” becomes “he says it like it is.” “She says it like it is” becomes “she stands up for what she believes.” As if every unexamined thought we have in the heat of every moment always aligns with who we are and what we value. As if everything we believe is in fact absolute truth, not only for us, but for everyone around us.

The internet has made it incredibly easy for us to collect data in terabytes, but it seems to have eroded our ability to cultivate comprehensive knowledge and thus to gain wisdom. As our digital bandwidth increases, our emotional and intellectual bandwidths are shrinking. We trade true curiosity for a haphazard data-dump from a search engine. Type a few letters into the search field, and you don’t even have to decide what you want to know, much less what you want to know about something. And then once you’ve been told what topic you want to know about, a single click yields infinite choices for edification.

And manipulation

.

And confirmation.

What we do now is simply curate existing messages to confirm our already-established opinions. We almost always click the search results that appear to confirm our bias. When we click a result that might question our established position, we do so by accident or with the intent to tear it apart and to tear the author apart. Because the medium (the messenger) is the message and if we don’t like the messenger, the message must be worthless.

We don’t get curious about our thoughts and feelings. We don’t explore our own stories to discern how millions of miniscule moments, words, steps and missteps, have shaped our views and each subsequent choice. We deal in absolutes…in black and white…in right or wrong…in good or bad. We disregard complexities…in people and in ideas…in favor of vapid generalities. We reduce each other to categories…others…with us or against us…denying the infinite Venn diagrams that make up the fabric of our human existence.

We don’t know ourselves…independently or collectively…because we have allowed the loudest people around us to drown out our consciences…to suggest the least generous interpretation of the people with whom we share life or to affirm the biases we already carry. We have eschewed connection for connectivity so that we are never alone in our entrenched viewpoints. There is always someone to tell us we are right.

We turn our backs on those who question our absolutes and we dehumanize them. It makes us feel better about our decision to disconnect from “them” or “those people.” Our self-curated message of absolute truth becomes the yardstick by which we judge everyone else…from the drug dealer to the teacher to the C-suite executive to the President of the United States. And it is a message that has not been held up to the scrutiny of critical thinking.

All of this divides us…from people who vote differently, worship differently, speak differently, love differently. No one person is responsible for our division and no one person will ever be able to unite us. With every choice we make about who is worthy and who is not WE have allowed ourselves to become divided.

It is WE who have turned our backs on thought and reason and reflection and connection, and we have done it to protect ourselves from accepting the possibility that none of us here on earth has all of the answers. This keeps us from working together to find any of the answers that we so desperately desire.

The good news? It is also WE who can put a stop to it. Stop absorbing the message without thinking about it. Stop supporting candidates, media outlets, talking heads, anyone who has a vested interest in keeping us divided, reactive, and unthinking...who has steeped their relevance in "otherizing"...who has pandered to you.

That's right...take the message of the guy or gal who you find MOST appealing and tear that person's platform apart. Do to him or her what you have been vigorously doing to the other candidates. Look for inconsistencies and hypocrisy. Look for empty platitudes. Look for the rhetoric that begins with a difference of opinion and ends with dehumanization of an individual or a group. Look for the promises -- both possible and improbable -- and consider how that person's priorities compare to your own. When you're done, look at what they've done and said in the past. Look at their unsanitized history, at the totality of who they are. What they have fought for and against...who they have surrounded themselves with...what they have demonstrated through action to be a priority. 

And then when you've picked them apart....everything about them from business deals, to old boyfriends, to college transcripts, to church memberships...once you feel like you know them and can adequately judge their worth as a candidate, imagine what people might believe about you if they could compile an internet dossier on your life. And imagine if they used it to judge your worth as a person. 

If you aren’t willing to apply the same process of critical thinking to your own deeply-held convictions that you apply to the deeply-held convictions of others, then I would invite you to ask yourself why you don’t have more faith those things you perceive to be truth. Why are the beliefs of the "other" subject to analysis but your beliefs are off-limits?