019: The Importance of Thinking Critically

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...or, "Fridays with Morrie." One way we can revive the intellectual heritage Freemasons had during the Enlightenment is to revive our commitment to critical thinking. What is critical thinking? It is the process we use to discover what is truth from fiction in an independent, disciplined and rigorous way. In these days of "spin," at a time when lies are just fine as long as you don't get caught, when "mission accomplished," means, well nothing and we are forced to really delve into what the word "is" really IS, critical thinking is an essential part of a healthy democracy. The problem is, we live in a consumerist age when our opinions are conveniently packaged for us by talk radio and pundits in an ever growing, shrill cacophany of meaningless well...crap.

Thank heavens there is a tradition in the west that values critical thinking, self-education and independent thought. Freemasonry. The ground floor of this tradition is critical thinking.

But why is critical thinking important? And what exactly is it anyway? In this episode, I talk to Dr. Morrie Fiddler, of the School for New Learning at DePaul Univeristy in Chicago. We also look at some really good media coverage of the Fraternity and some really really bad coverage.

What do you think? Is critical thinking an issue we could again be champions of?