In response to my previous article ‘What have we become?’ (March 4), I received many appreciation emails from my readers. Some asked for more details about how to evaluate beliefs and ideologies that appear to be dominating our lives.
For example, Ahmed Ali Khan, in his emails, said that the article painted a realistic and true state of our society and put it in ‘black and white’. Rehan Khattak wrote that the article was enlightening with an ‘accurate’ analysis of the prevailing situation in Pakistan.
When it comes to evaluating beliefs and ideologies, I believe people can develop their own criteria to form an opinion. I, for one, have tried to learn a thing or two about how to see through the ruses paddled so relentlessly in societies such as Pakistan.
Critical thinking is a skill that comes in handy while dealing with prevailing beliefs and ideologies. Interestingly, the very same people who propagate certain false beliefs and dubious ideologies often talk about using critical thinking and also manage to step up their rhetoric to restrict intellectual activity in society.
For them, critical thinking is useful as long as it questions other ideologies. Their delusion of grandeur is beyond their scope of ‘critical thinking’. Their task is to deter the audiences from raising doubts about their convictions, as that type of critical thinking is ‘fifth generation warfare’, whatever that may be.
So how do we evaluate beliefs and ideologies using critical thinking? First, we need to understand that critical thinking is all about using our minds effectively. Of course, everybody uses their minds but not everyone does so effectively. It is a cognitive activity that calls for mental actions leading to new knowledge and questioning the existing set of knowledge.
Cognition is a process that makes use of our experiences, senses, and thoughts to understand concepts and ideas –........