Critical Thinking
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ince the dawn of time man has always been curious about the world and its environment. Growth and learning, are often born from a need for survival maybe, but not always. There seems to be no end to the driving need for more and more as each new challenge is met. Why are we not satisfied and complacent once our basic needs are met? What drives our curiosity? Why do we think, especially critically?
There is so much to be learned from creation that every time one thinks they have reached a milestone, there is another challenge to be overcome. If taken from a more scientific point of view and following rational thought or logical process, there is the perception that satisfaction will be achieved once the theory of our origin is proven. Unlike any other species on earth that continues to do the same thing from generation to generation year after year except in cases of environmental change where adaptation becomes necessary, the human being does not stay the same, and live based on instinct.
By: Imanullah Ahmed
Many people think that critical thinking evolved from our need to survive, but then why is it still so prominent in today’s society? What is the driving force that keeps people asking questions when we have progressed so far? After we have already developed technology that can help us complete tasks in a quarter length of the time it took us in the past, using half the effort. Why don’t we just stop and become lazy uncritical thinkers who depend on the past and not advance? Why not become people who go with the flow or general ideas of the norm? Why not take the easiest course of action and let our opinion be mass produced by the media instead of having our own individual ideas? The human being is an anomaly in this world because we separate from herd mentality. A horse or other animal will go to a watering hole, satisfy their thirst and move on. A human being will go to the same watering hole, drink and then think what is this called? what is it made of? How can I duplicate it? If I can’t duplicate it, how can I better use it? The human brain is not satisfied until it can draw a logical conclusion and explain the origin of the existence of things and see everything to its full conclusion or potential even at the cost of our own destruction.
“Critical thinking can be compared to the ripple in the ocean when a pebble is thrown into it.”
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The human being for some reason has an innate desire to always want to be better, to seek the origin of things, to define and classify them. If taken from a religious standpoint the view that God granted Adam the gift of naming and curiosity before he exiled him from the garden of Eden and left him with the emptiness and the need to seek truth in an imperfect world, then if that need was passed on to us in the form of critical thinking will human beings ever be satisfied if we’re meant to seek perfection?
We as Human beings have a need to advance our own reality and always strive to meet the challenge of overcoming obstacles put in their path. One might ask the question, why do we constantly seek and think critically? The best answer I can give is that by understanding our world we can often understand more about our place in the world, and expand our understanding and that is what drives us to grow. However, I want to put this question to our audience what drives a human being to think critically?