File Under: The Burning World
I did not intend for this to be the first substantive piece I am adding to Random E(motions)S. I thought I would start slowly and build up to the multiple themes I outlined in my welcome message. However, the world has been burning for some time, and now the fire is ablaze here at home, and IMHO, is leaving embers that will impact our future. I was in college during the late 60s when college protests were at their peak. I kept my head down, looking to get my engineering degree, get a job for the unheard amount of $10K a year, and get a draft deferment by working in that “Military Industrial Complex.” I was safe, although I understood what the protests were about, and supported those who protested.
Perhaps my perception now is like Benjamin Franklin once said
“Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.”
The protests on colleges throughout the country, for many reasons, indicate to me that our kids are not all right, and we are all responsible for it.
I’ll begin with my biases. I am a second generation immigrant. As many of you have perhaps taken one of those home DNA tests, mine has indicated my ancestry is over 99% Ashkenazi Jewish, most likely from the western Ukraine – and I am not sure why I was surprised by this. I have a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in counselling psychology. My brain hurts as I try to understand the world through the different lenses I have acquired through this journey. As a transgender woman, I understand hate, change and life transitions. As a parent of 3 adult children and 3 grandchildren, I worry about the state of our country, our world, and our planet, not only as how it impacts me, but also to those I will someday leave behind.
I see the world is burning!
I see our planet burning!
I see our country burning!
I see our children overwhelmed and confused how to address all of this and we have been of little help in guiding them, as we are not in any better shape. We have deferred to our schools and colleges, and they too have shown they are also overwhelmed and confused how to help.
Those that are throwing the logs on these fires, are taking advantage of this, as they, in their minority desires to control, rule and destroy anything and anyone that gets in their way.
For the moment, let’s focus on the present college protests, that are in name protesting the plight of the people in Gaza – I will not use the term Palestinians to define these people – as their own government of Hamas started a war with neighboring Israel, and now are truly suffering as that war has been brought home to them.
The plight of these people is atrocious and once again shows that war is hell, and the innocent will suffer greatly no matter who is to blame. History has many examples: Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. One can argue the politics of this specific war, one can protest – peacefully, I hope, but it is not the only war that is burning and I am sad that this is the one that our children have chosen to make the most important to protest, and in so doing, choosing sides and forgetting how to protest peacefully.
Our kids are not all right! They have been led to supporting what might be one of the small fires in the burning world.
As I rack my brain, with the experiences I have learned over time, I can only conclude that the collective “WE” have not taught them the proper ways how to critically think, determine and choose what is most important, and (almost) nothing can be solved/resolved in an either-or manner as the world does not (successfully) act in a binary manner.
Cognitive dissonance vs critical thinking
In a country, world, and planet that is burning, it is often hard to choose what is most important and where we can make a difference. Do we start small, or go big? What are my ideologies, my costs, my benefits? Am I a leader or a follower? What are my peers saying and doing – after all, I still have the human need to belong to a group? Once one is picked what do I do with the discarded choices?
Using my words:
The American Psychological Association defines cognitive Dissonance as:
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes unpleasant feelings of unease or discomfort.
So, in this case, once a cause is chosen as most important, the other causes will be deemed less important. For today’s protests, in the burning world, I wonder how the plight of the Gaza people has been chosen as the most important. For now, I will leave the politics for discussion elsewhere, but it is my belief that by making this choice, it shows the lack of critical thinking on the students and the teaching of us, and our educational system.
Critical Thinking as Defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1987
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.
I will take the position that he protesters seem to have skipped much of these steps, which leads me to the next issue.
The either-or fallacy … false binaries
The either/or fallacy goes by a variety of names. It is sometimes called the false dilemma fallacy, the black and white fallacy, or the fallacy of false alternatives. It often results from what is called all-or-none thinking.
It always a simple choice to make between 2 alternatives, but it is most likely not correct. Whether in a war, one or the other side is good or evil, which one is to blame, which one makes atrocities, and the other is innocent, assuredly takes the easy way out, and then our minds will use cognitive dissonance to support their choice. The present protests do not have an easy binary solution or definition.
What is one to do?
I have spent over forty year in the tech world, managing engineering teams and program managing engineering projects before I went back to school and learned to be a counselor, where the first thing I learned is that counselors do not manage people.
I have found a common thread in all of this, when I can ask the following question:
What problem are you trying to solve? I follow up with, is this the most important problem you have? Very often it take a good deal of discussion to get these answered in a manner that is an example of critical thinking.
Many years ago, the concept of quality improvement took hold in many business worlds and a structured approach – akin to critical thinking with data analysis was created and taught. Look at the ideas presented here.
Six Sigma Pareto Analysis
Define the problem: Clearly identify the issue or process that needs improvement, such as customer complaints or production defects.
Gather data: Collect relevant data to analyze the frequency or impact of each contributing factor to the problem.
As I see the burning world, I am trying to gather some data – although in a fairly short, and simple summary.
Somehow, it strikes me that the present Spring 2024 protests across college campuses focused on the incorrectly named pro Palestine movement is not the most important item that impacts our kids today. However this has taken hold, and our kids have followed it shows the lack of critical thinking. I am not saying the issue should be ignored, but it is not worthy of violent actions in a protest. I am trying to avoid the politics of all of these above – which I may reserve for a future date.
All of this shows me that are kids are not all right. They have not been taught how to think, to think critically. To do the work to learn and analyze what is important to them. Perhaps most of us, also do not know how to do this.
If this is so, it’s time we learn, we teach, and ask/demand our schools to teach this. I hope that it is not too late.
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Thanks for Visiting,
Make a Difference…but please make sure it is the right one!