Becoming A Contrarian Isn’t A Shortcut To Critical Thinking

There Are No Shortcuts Either — Tough

Image by Gerd Altmann

Critical thinking is essential to survive the Information Age. It sadly isn’t as common to our reasoning as we would like to think or, alas, boast. Shortcuts are something else that everyone is after today. Unfortunately, high demand can’t always translate into high availability. Contrarians are tragically consumed by both concepts.

The idea behind critical thinking, regardless of how much we drag and brandish the concept around, is that we commit to assessing information as objectively as humanly possible, that we commit to assessing all the available information, and that we accept we might not like the conclusion we reach. Thinking critically doesn’t mean criticising liberally. After all, half of the job still involves thinking. Many commentators seem to place all the weight of the critical element on what they judge. I can’t help but feel that it should be our thinking we pledge to be critical of when we claim to be critical thinkers. The subject should be critical in their thinking of the object, surely, not critical of the object itself. Thinking a lot of critical thoughts about anything might be entertaining to some, but it is hardly intellectual.