Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Some Thoughts on Hope, Cynicism, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté.
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3 comments:
This article brings up a great point about critical thinking that kinda hits close to my personal beliefs. I spend a lot of my time thinking about critical thinking, and why so much of society doesn’t always do it to the best of their ability, and I feel that this article definitely has a good hold on some of the answers to that question. A few times in my life I have met people who have a spark in them, they go about their life recognizing all the flaws they see and trying to analyze how people can make them better. It sounds like a simple thing, but I have met far more people who would simply accept the problem as unsolvable or not even recognize the problem to begin with. This article says that in order to problem solve, and even in order to live happier more fulfilling lives, actively engaging in life and having both the thought and hope to be able to fix a problem is key. I agree very much with that.
I look around at my peers, those who comprise my "generation", and I find that we are often those who are most desensitized to the horrors of this world. I remember one night, following an evening of nightly news coverage of the Columbine shootings, when I asked my parents what I should do if someone with a gun came into my school. It shocked my parents, not for the content, but for the fact that I asked the question not from a place of fear, but from a desire to simply know. Murder, robbery, and death counts from far-off wars were - and still are - what populate a solid one or two hours of my evenings, just by virtue of watching the evening news. Even attempts to show that there is still good in the world, like the Nightly News' "Making a Difference" segment, are so pedestalized and elevated that it makes it seem like people really had to go digging through the dumpster of the world to find these gems of kindness and caring.
I know the world is good. I look at my friends and I know. For every bad thing one person does to me, there are 99 to support me, and to love me. But I can't help but wonder if the world I see is too small to give me a good idea of the global world. I am grateful to live in the world I do, where "good" is not just a frequent occurrence, but the norm. But how do I measure the world, when none of the sources available to me give me a straight answer?
I think this article is a very clear example of our culture's habit of choosing to ignore things we don't want to think about. I agree with this author's statements about hope. I think hope is absolutely essential for any progress to be made but that hope can not come at the price of failing to fully acknowledge the breadth of issues. If the news does not highlight the 'bad' events and customs of the world than those removed from that negativity will not even know that it is happening. While hearing about sad things may bum us out that does not mean that we can pretend that they are less prevalent than they are. We owe it to the people who experience the things that, typically through the coincidence of where you happen to be born, we aren't forced to experience. There is a difference between hope and denial and I think that line is blurred in this article. And, by all means, publish stories that are uplifting and inspiring but it is entitled to declare that that is the norm for the world. "Not having to think about something sounds like an amazing privilege." -Adam Falkner
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