Thought, Logic, Reason and Critical Thinking

It is now no mystery that some quite influential ‘philosophers’ were ‘mentally’ ill.
Alfred Korzybski

I was going through a thought exercise one day and trying to figure out what it is that humans do best, what it is that sets us apart from other species to make us so successful. My first thought was: principal to any species is how well it reacts to its environment, to master the environment, and to thrive in it.

Thriving is really based on choices or decisions. One flatworm may not be able to sense that it is in direct sunlight and will perish, while another detects that it is in direct sunlight and decides to move into the shade - and lives on to propagate.

Human beings are particularly good at making decisions, and have developed thought, reason, and logic to help make those decisions. On the other hand, thought, reason and logic are merely tools that we have developed, and individual humans may choose to utilize them or not.

Ironically, though humans have developed thought, reason and logic, we have also developed this thing called 'society' which allows our members to still thrive even though they choose not to use thought, reason or logic. Even more interesting is that collectively we use even less thought, reason and logic - yet still thrive as a society - perhaps because these tools are so powerful that only a few need use them in order for the whole society to thrive.

Critical Thinking is interesting in that unlike all our other tools for making decisions and choices, critical thinking is more like an approach to using all the other tools of thought, reason, and logic to read through all the bullshit that people try to spin us that is disguised as thought, logic and reason. Amazingly many people (i.e. politicians, lobbyists, marketing and advertising, religions, etc.) go to considerable thought to improvise bullshit.

Now bullshit is an interesting tool, in that its goal is to defy thought, reason and logic in order to persuade other people into making decisions that are not based on thought, reason and logic. Now that's just astounding, that as a species and society we have developed tools that take fundamentally bad choices and decision making, and intentionally try to dress it up as good choices and decision making.

What I don't understand is that as a species, how long can we continue to thrive on this planet, while the most influential people keep getting better at bullshit, and increasing numbers of people keep buying it. I conclude that we will only be able to thrive as a species indefinitely if, and only if, our critical thinking gets better than our bullshit.