Critical Thinker Habitually Pulls Back the Curtain
 

Critical Thinker Habitually Pulls Back the Curtain

I guess, for all of us, a meme that gives impetuous to much of our behavior is the “capitalism is good” meme. This meme, with its closest suburbs, probably represents a fundamental element of the dominant ideology of western culture.

This cluster of memes contains the wonderful “doing good by doing well” meme. This is the rascal that allows us to follow our imperialistic impulses. This meme allows us to invade Iraq under false pretenses, it allows us to open our borders to those who will work cheap, it allows for the “trickle down” economic theory, it allowed the Nineteenth Century imperialism practiced by our European cousins, etc.

Most of the memes we live by have never been examined by any of us. I suspect this one, in particular, needs to be placed on the table for close individual examination.

We saw the Nineteenth Century birth of a new economic entity, the corporation. A recent delivery of a new economic entity has occurred. This is the corporation-state. The new supranational corporation is here and on a fast freight. I suspect all these things happened too fast for a liberal democracy to encompass; so much for liberal democracy.

CT is about analyzing and understanding.

One thing I have learned about playing chess is that for almost every move there is a bad judgment a good judgment and a better judgment. And I also learned that one pays a price for each bad judgment.

In life we are constantly making judgments. There is an art and science for judgment making and it is called Critical Thinking. Our schools and colleges have prepared us to make good judgments about special matters as it might pertain to our job but have done little to prepare us for the constant judgment making. CT is about learning how to think.


Perhaps philosophy should be an advocate of “lets take a meme out for examination” day.

You've been out of college what, 50 years? You're out of touch.

I agree with much of what you say, except this line:

Explain how you know that most of us hav not examined the 'memes' we live by?

If you respond to this guy he'll just keep going. This one is posted on roughly 25 other forums. By my judgment he gets one more thread to post before banning, unless he becomes more conversational and involved. Let's hope it's a good one.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

--The Wizard

But the responses, and drift, has been interesting, without his dialog. Are they worse than Flint or LJ's stir up shit threads? :cool:

Wait... what?
I'm not liking the close connection between examination and curtains in this thread.

You're assuming he/she's actually been to college.

I've no reason to doubt his bio, and his description of college fits with the pre 60's college environment.

We have no shortage of good source to navel-gaze. I'd be happy to post more of my shit if need be, or somebody can just go get coberst's stuff when he posts it elsewhere. What we are after is good, engaged users.

Let me add that I desperately bought the hook this time and was ready to talk about it. But then I thought better: an uninvolved user doesn't get to set our agenda, that's my thinking.

He doesn't get to squirt his stuff all over the net just because he CAN.

you're just hung up on your meme UT.


BTW, I think the guy is a nutter but I would greatly enjoy it if he'd actually engage after posting his thread. Unfortunately, I've checked a couple of the forums he's dropping these same threads on and they've come to the same conclusion. He drops and runs. Not too much value in that.

offensive. because he's implying HE's the only critical thinker around. And I hate the repeated use of the word, "meme."

I used "meme" in Scrabble a few months ago. My opponents had never heard of it. We didn't have any dictionaries handy so they accepted my use of a Blackberry to look up the Wikipedia definition. I won the game with that word.

Does it say he attended one or just worked at one?