Alternatives To Critical Thinking
In the ether of my memories I recall that people often hold up critical thinking as one of the most important things people are not learning in school. It seems that whenever something stupid happens, or when people act in a stupid way, a lack of critical thinking is to blame. I believe most people on the street wouldn’t even be able to give a straight and internally consistent answer as to what critical thinking even is. For our purposes, I will define critical thinking as it is described in wikipedia: an analysis of facts to form a judgment. In school, I was taught that critical thinking is the process of skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.
Who honestly does that?
People don’t think critically because they aren’t taught how. If they are taught how, they cannot apply the method to things other than what they remember from examples. Sometimes one lacks plain ole time to get the proper thinking done. Not everyone can sit down and spend a semester thinking something through critically. A lot of our day to day thinking has to be done lightning fast, and when people “have to think about X” they aren’t doing any thinking at all, but are only stalling because they don’t know how to think about X.
Enter Edward de Bono. I read a book by de Bono called Thinking Course. I thought perhaps I could learn how to think better, therefore creating a better life for myself. Simple, right? The real challenge to think better is to do the work of thinking. The good news is there are alternatives to critical thinking that may help you solve your own individual problems.
Critical thinking is inherently negative. Critics are looking for flaws and problems. Analysis consists of searching for what’s wrong with something, for what can be taken away. This is not always a bad thing, but it’s not the only way to think, and if one develops the habit of shooting things down, you are soon to start shooting yourself down.
It’s time to start thinking differently, in which I mean we can change our perception of something.
Edward starts with two acronyms: PMI and APC.
PMI = Plus, Minus, Interesting
APC = Alternatives, Possibilities, Choices
We can’t, or don’t, always have the ability to take the time to think critically. Sometimes we have to make a decision on the spot. Let’s say someone invites you to an event and you don’t feel like going. Obviously you cannot think critically about it, but you can make a quick observation of whether or not there are pros, cons, or anything neutral or interesting. Maybe you will meet some cool people, maybe you will get hurt or get in an accident on the way there because traffic will be heavy, maybe you’ll learn something new that will take you in a different direction in life. You make your choice based on a quick scan of possibilities.
What do we often do when we talk with people? We joke, we make humorous observations, we laugh, we smile. Humor isn’t usually thought of as a tool to think about something, but humor is a gateway to creative thinking. It is also used to break down walls and barriers, or personal frustration. If we try to look at something in a humorous light, we are immediately thinking of new outside-the-box possibilities. I love satire because it always paints even the most mundane things in a new light that make them enjoyable to think about. A world with only critical thinking would be terrifically boring.
This was just a taste of what Thinking Course had to offer. I wanted to first discuss that there exist real alternatives that can help you in your quest to solve a problem or make a decision. The first step to any thinking, however, is to give yourself time and space to think. We live in a world that does most of the thinking for us. One of the reasons why I had to delete social media was because of the speed with which I would change topics through the process of scrolling. Scrolling itself created the habit of shutting off my thinking. I found that I didn’t have time to think, so I would just react, and experience emotions, but not process and think through those emotions, and before I knew it, I was getting brainwashed. I will continue to create a few more posts to cover some of the breadth of de Bono’s discussion, but for now, go ahead and practice applying PMI and APC to your next problem.
