Listening to Guns N' Roses, Get in the Ring off Use Your Illusions || (when I was about 15) was an epiphany moment for me. It was when I realised that the media was not necessarily portraying the truth in their articles about the artists they were covering. It was part of me learning that everything I read was not meant to be taken at face value. This has stood me in good stead to this day. And thinking of this reminds me of something I've been thinking about of late...
Now in an interactive experience like Facebook, everything is media. We are all media. We are all sharing information and it is almost as fluid and in the moment as our own thoughts and processing. Sometimes we see things shared that we feel powerfully about, we pass it on, it spreads, knowledge grows...
Often this is 'All Good'. The information is legitimate and we are acknowledging and processing our personal Truths as a whole.
But every now and then, something is off. Something is shown to be false, misleading or simply a lie. Then, there are outcries about critical thinking, confirming your source before you share, etc. Yet, what if your source is one you trust, what if -they- do not have the means or connection to confirm just as you do not. We are not reporters who have to legally confirm all their sources but we are still responsible for our own posts. If you consider the information important to pass alone but don't have access to the origins of it what do you do? Should you simply not share if you do not know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the information in question is legitimate? To share or not to share, that is the question.
I find myself in the share camp here and I will tell you why. Facebook (and all globally connected social networking tools) make us a true community organism in a way that humanity has (as far as I know) never experienced before. Now we have the ability to engage in critical thinking as a community.
As an example, let's say, I come across a share of an article pertaining to information that is very important to me. I do not have the means to discern it is legitimate but the source sharing it is well known and trusted. So I share it on, a friend shares it and then, someone who -does- have the means to check it responds and shows that the information was misleading. This actually happened to me recently and I was very happy to find out the information I had shared was not legitimate. I expressed as much in the comments and was thankful for that.
But then, I saw that one of the comments on that share of it was an individual bemoaning the lack of critical thinking that seemed (to them) apparent due to our having shared this information. At first I was chagrined. Oh how shameful of me not to spend however many hours digging and searching for my sources sources etc... but this did not stick, because this process... the sharing, the feedback, the discovery of the truths behind the information, that is exactly what our social networking allows for and that process in and of it's self is a macrocosm of the processing we each go through within our own minds when we do engage in the very thing they were bemoaning the lack of.
So it is my belief that critical thinking has not been lost. It is my belief that we are now able to engage in critical thinking as a community. This is huge! When before has humanity been able to witness and process information on such a large community scale before? Never as far as I know. This is huge and it is beautiful and it is new. It requires a new sort of processing. One where we accept that we do not always know the truth. One where we realise that not everything we read is fact and even if it is fact it may not be Truth. One where we allow ourselves to listen to one another because while we may not as individuals have the time and resources to process all the information being shared with us, someone somewhere out there does and so long as we keep sharing and keep an open mind and heart, we will hear them and Truth will become known.
We do not ever fail when we share information. We fail when we refuse to keep our own views open to hearing what others have to say about the information we share.
So I say, Share on! Critical Thinking is not dead. Critical Thinking is evolving.
