Have we been taught how to think or what to think? Our ability to memorize something and write it down again or fill in the bubble of the correct answer does not gauge how well we can think, but how well we can be taught what to think. Asking questions is one of the healthiest life habits a person can have. When we question ourselves based on our own life decisions, we begin to change according to who we want to be and don’t want to be. If we don’t question others, be prepared to be taken advantage of. Yes, there are a lot of good people in the world, but also a lot of people who take advantage of good people. It is hard to learn someone’s motives unless we ask questions and think for ourselves, and that goes from the individual level all the way up to the national and even global level. When an expert in their field tells us something related to their area of expertise we immediately assume that person must have the best answer as an expert in their field should. For example, a teacher at a public school is supposed to have a certain amount of education which qualifies them to be a teacher, so what the teacher is most likely must be correct, right? It turns out the people who pay that teacher actually control what he/she teaches, not the teacher.
This is good in part because there is a certain standard being upheld, but this is also terrible because now the people paying the teacher makes sure the teacher teaches only what they want you to learn. That’s right, if you are reading this you either are or have been a part of the same system. The same thing goes with media outlets around the world. Who do you think controls the content that is put out on the news? Perhaps if you look at who owns the media company, the one who has the power to hire and fire, deliver pay cuts and pay raises, you will see who is truly writing the script. Whether it is government-owned or privately owned is beside the point, but what really matters is that we as individuals ask these kinds of questions so that we are not blindly believing everything we are taught and told as if it is coming directly from God.
Catching on? We are not a herd of cows that can be told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it unless we expressly give that permission by choosing not to think critically and ask simple but important questions. The fewer people who think critically in society, the more people there are who are willing even unbeknownst to themselves to blindly accept who or what the supposed authority on a subject is saying without having any clue of their motives. Now is the time to start asking more questions, not to get crazy and paranoid, but to at least respect ourselves enough to dig a little deeper. As we think more critically our own personal development into the man or woman we want to become accelerates, and the society we want to see becomes a reality.
