Raquel's Critical Thinking Post-2

The most striking thing I learned from reading posts from other students is that I am a pessimist and it is not necessarily a bad thing. Million’s post made me consider my own approach to life, specifically to other people. I am suspicious of everything, questioning and analyzing what I read, hear, and see. I remember once when I worked in the café at Barnes & Noble, a coworker passed an idea by me to see what I thought because he said, I am “good at finding flaws in other peoples’ ideas”. He meant it as a criticism but I took it as a compliment. I also try to do the same thing with my own ideas, although it is definitely more difficult to do critically analyze my own thoughts and behaviors.

Additionally, I was reminded by Brandi that we need to remain critical thinkers regardless if we are not interested in the message or content. I was reminded of the time I recommended the movie, Fight Club, to one of my friends in high school but she was unable to get half way through because the intense violence turned her off and made her disinterested (1999). She could not see why I liked the movie so much. Similar to Brandi’s example, my friend was unable to think critically because she was not interested in the superficial topic. I was able to convince her to watch it again (the whole way through) for a deeper meaning and she realized that the movie is not about fist fighting at all, but was actually about fighting the Capitalist ideology that stuff makes you happy. Once she was able to get past her initial disinterest, she thoroughly enjoyed the movie and felt guilty about brushing it off.

Although this of course has to apply to the other side also. We need to remain critical even when we are extremely interested in a topic or person. We cannot be soft on information we agree with especially when it comes from people we like. For me, it all goes back to something someone said at a debate competition in high school: “73% of all statistics are made up on the spot.”


Works Cited

Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham
Carter. 20th Century Fox. 1999.