Just Think About It
By: Nick Mair
Tags: Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Politics

An essay-rant centered around critical thinking

Increasingly people are given access to a greater and greater amount of information, yet this greater amount of information is diluting the worth of information, and people are losing the ability to critically evaluate this information. This essay will cover a variety of aspects which form this problem, namely a desecration of critical thinking, including the manufacture of consent, poor quality and misguided education, psychological drivers and the impact of hyperindividualism. I strongly, strongly believe that critical thinking leads to a variety of conclusions, as people hold different assumptions as to what is good, what is desirable, what is possible and what means justify what ends. These differences are vital, we need to keep each other in check, so I am not advocating for any specific conclusion or worldview, I know many people who hold solid positions which oppose my own, and who am I to say they’re wrong? The first thing that I investigate when presented with opposing views is on what grounds those views are built? Has this person blindly accepted propaganda from any ideology? Or have they done their own research? What infuriates me perhaps most is those who blindly adhere to leftism, leftism is not a movement which can be blindly adhered to, that is directly opposed to the values of the left. When I see people posting or commenting simple talking points without actually knowing what they are saying, it deeply worries me. Of course I believe there are views so abhorrent that they must be opposed by any means necessary. I make assumptions about the world which are based on weak foundations, but I am lucky enough to have access to people and resources which regularly challenge and test these views, causing them to crumble and improving my ability to form opinions. I will present a variety of arguments, challenging common assumptions and also providing reasons for the desecration of critical thinking. Of course this essay will not be truly objective, that is simply not possible, but I truly hope that this essay can convince someone to just critically examine their worldview.

A widespread, fundamental assumption about the world, at least in the west, is that we live in a meritocracy, a democracy and that ultimately our system is good. When this assumption is challenged by evidence, such as by Tim Costello in the SMH, or by Thomas Pikkety or in the case of the United States, the work of Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page which argues the US is an oligarchy, people react quite negatively. Was it democratic when the US murdered Fred Hampton? When the FBI tried to convince MLK to commit suicide? How much do you know about COINTELPRO, would you call that democratic? Much like the concept of Determinism, when presented with these conclusions, people will resort to outright denial, without actually presenting a proper argument against it. These claims challenge a fundamental assumption and rightly make people uncomfortable. Unfortunately for these people, being uncomfortable with claims built on strong foundations means nothing, it does not help anyone understand or change the situation. The most common ‘argument’ I have encountered in regards to this goes along the lines of “my parent/s came from a working class background and now they are wealthy!” This argument is a great example of survivorship bias, as well as being very anecdotal. Survivorship bias occurs when someone only pays attention to those who have made it past a barrier or selection process, such as class transition, while ignoring the far greater number who did not, often due to their lack of visibility. Having grown up in South East Asia, I saw first hand the sheer numbers of inequality, living a very privileged life while seeing families living on the streets every day, but in the west, it is not as common to see inequality so clearly, often it is hidden behind closed doors, both literally and figuratively. Education is often seen as the path out of poverty in a meritocracy, but Australia’s education system is one of the most unequal in the ‘developed’ world (note, I use developed simply for ease, but of course we must keep in mind that these nations are developed because they are exploiters while the ‘underdeveloped’ are actually the overexploited). A 2020 report by Victoria University shows that 86.3% of students from high SES backgrounds gain post school qualifications, while only 52.9% of students from low SES backgrounds do the same. The Opportunity Atlas is a prime example of clear evidence that the US is far from a meritocracy, while the Murdoch Commission in Australia demonstrates the huge impact the rich have on our government through propaganda. Now, with all this information available and working off the assumption (yes, I’m assuming in an essay about critical thinking, it is just easier) that people in these nations would value freedom, democracy and equal opportunity, it is a puzzle that there is not more uproar, more action taken in response to these conclusions, that we are not truly free, democratic or equal. I don’t doubt that essentially the entire population is capable of understanding this, and many do comprehend it, but I would say that the reason our reaction to this is so pacifist is fear. A fear that what we were taught about the world growing up is false, that hard work does not guarantee success, that any of us could lose everything by chance, that we are far closer to being homeless than being a billionaire. Given the enormous scope of structural change necessary to remedy the issues of inequality, it is far easier to deny, either consciously or subconsciously, that these serious problems exist and that we can fix them. It is here that we see the loss of critical thinking, as a society we succumb to fear in the face of these monumental challenges, we have surpassed the peak of the Yerkes-Dodson law. This line of thinking can be seen in conspiracies which have arisen within anti-lockdown, covid denier and anti-vaxx circles. These groups are confronted with a rightly frightening reality, that we are living in a pandemic which is to a large extent beyond our control. For some people, it is easier to concoct a complex conspiracy which requires enormous amounts of backfilling, so that there are clear lines of good and evil, that there is a secret, evil group controlling the world and causing the pandemic. What I find funniest about this position is the assumption that a secret group of people control the world, instead of the group of people that we know control the world, such as documented by the wealth distribution studies of Oxfam. For these people, accepting lockdowns and vaccines means accepting the well documented reality of the pandemic, which deeply frightens them. Of course there are other reasons for this, which I will touch on later. Ignorance may well be bliss for some, but while these people live in bliss, billions suffer, and those in bliss begin to lose it due to their ignorance. We must be willing to be afraid, to recognise that we have little control over the outcome of our lives, to critically examine the nature of our reality, we cannot let fear triumph over critical thinking.

What good is a right if we cannot effectively make use of it? We forget the ‘right of critical thinking’. Freedom of speech and thought is seen as one of the great achievements of liberal democracy, often its primary defence against criticisms, yet are we truly free to say what we want? This is another very common assumption in the west, often used to criticise other nations, but as Fidel Castro once stated in response to an interview question about freedom of the press, “An enemy of socialism cannot write in our newspapers. But we don’t deny it, and we don’t go around proclaiming a hypothetical freedom of the press where it actually doesn’t exist, the way you people do.” Without passing judgment on the actions of the Cuban government, Castro raises an important point here, freedom of speech does not truly exist, it is just a question of which governments admit that. Once again I bring up the case of the Murdoch Commission in Australia, which investigates the shrinking media diversity in Australia and the impact of Newcorp’s ownership of roughly two thirds of Australia’s daily newspapers. To quote Noam Chomsky, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” The Pew Research center demonstrates that Americans rank in the middle of education rankings, often behind “other advanced industrial nations”, and Australia was ranked 39/41 middle-high income nations in education by UNICEF. As the University of Western Australia states, “Fewer than 20 per cent of year 12 students go to independent schools yet they receive about one-third of all university offers”, and Australia was ranked 30/38 in education equality, while the US was ranked 24th. When combining high inequality in education with overall poor quality of education, the worth of free speech is diminished. But once again, despite being aware of these issues, fear overcomes us as a population, we do not want to consider the possibility that our speech may not be as free as we think, if you keep a population within a certain scope of thinking, speech is not a threat to power, as Mark Fisher argues, we cannot conceptualise a different world. Returning to my favourite case study, the various groups opposed to covid measures, we see this effect in a weird manner. Cries that those opposed to them are “sheep of the mainstream media” and “need to wake up” are common, but in reality, these people are simply an unintended product of the very propaganda they say they oppose. Firstly of course, the idea that a secret group of evil people control the world instead of the widely known group of people who control the world is a product of both fear, wanting to assume our system is still fundamentally good and is instead being sabotaged, and misplaced genuine, fair anger. Much like age old antisemitic conspiracies, it works in the favour of the ruling class for the population, especially the working class, to blame some abstracted, external group for the woes actually caused by the ruling class. There are different types of people opposed to COVID measures, one of which being working class people who have been given little financial and health support, and as a result had poor material conditions thrust upon them during this lockdown. A frustration at the material conditions experienced by the working class at the fault of the ruling class sounds very Marxist, and at the least, one would think they would demand better social welfare at least, but instead they oppose lockdown. Why? Because these people have been denied proper education, they have been subject to intense, covert propaganda and been fed conspiracies blaming abstract groups instead of the structural flaws of our capitalist system which have led to this point. Looking at footage of the Sydney protests, I saw no hammer and sickles, no red flags, no flags of anarchy, instead I saw right wing and populist banners and iconography, it was even revealed far right individuals had organised these protests. For the people, they have been told this red herring is entirely responsible for their suffering, instead of the people actually responsible. Our ability to think critically has been destroyed by our lack of equal, quality education and the intense media propaganda. Often media outlets claiming to oppose the ‘mainstream media’ point their audiences towards views which further the control of the working class. Freedom of speech and thought is worthless without the equal development of critical thinking.

Although this is a sort of digression, I do find particularly interesting another prominent group which opposes COVID measures — the upper class trope. The trope is well known, the ‘hippies in Byron Bay’, ‘Anti-Vaxx Mums’, wealthy people who do not face real oppression and all of that sort. What is initially puzzling is the fact that they have no clear reason for this opposition, they have benefitted from the system, they live comfortably and safely. To contrast, African Americans, among the huge myriad of reasons they have to oppose the government, know the history of the American government using medicine as a faucet of oppression, leading to the Pew Research Center reporting in November 2020 that only 42% of African Americans would be willing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, despite 71% claiming to know someone who was hospitalised or died as a result of COVID-19. Another example of reasonable medical hesitancy occured in Pakistan, where rates declined by as much as 39% after it was revealed that the CIA had been using a vaccination drive to collect DNA without patients knowing to aid their search for Bin Laden. So why are these people suddenly greatly concerned by government overreach, freedom and vaccinations? My serious answer is revolutionary cosplay. These people have seen, through history and the contemporary world, the very real struggles of oppressed peoples, in a legitimate search for freedom, equality and safety, yet these ‘upper class freedom fighters’ have never actually experienced systemic oppression. Social change has been turned into a spectacle, seen in the well meaning but frankly weird means of support for the BLM movement, such as posting black squares, or painting the clenched fist on one’s face and making it into a TikTok, for these people, politics has become a game of social clout points. This is what is often termed ‘performative activism’. For these specific COVID-19 measure opponents, they feel left out that they haven’t had ‘a turn’ at playing the freedom fighters, they are bored of their ivory tower, so they invent reasons to feel oppressed, claiming threats to their freedom. Comparisons to the Holocaust are horrifying, but unfortunately often made by these people, as they are so far removed from the reality of oppression that one of the most inhumane, disgusting and shameful chapters of human history is comparable to them not being able to go to the gym. To these people I simply raise the case of the ‘smoker’s rights movement’, which arose when bans on smoking in certain public places were put into place, the movement was defeated by the argument that although smokers are entitled to bodily autonomy in terms of choosing to smoke, they are not entitled to do so in places where smoking violates other’s autonomy by exposing them to harmful substances. In the same way, these people are entitled to not get the vaccine, but are not entitled to risk spreading COVID-19 to others. Choices have consequences. A lack of critical thinking is once again found, as these people start with the desire to be oppressed, and find reasons to create an illusion of oppression, instead of worrying about the people who actually do face oppression.

A remarkable trait of humans is our ability and tendency to work together, we are able to create something greater than the sum of our parts. The ability to work together with others, especially those with different views is fundamental to critical thinking. Our societal obsession with being ‘self made’, ‘always hustling’ and entrepreneurs is both a symptom and cause of the demise of critical thinking. Hyperindividualism has been cultivated as a result of the ‘dog eat dog’ nature of our modern world, convincing people that they should not care about broader populations, that they can really only count on themselves and their opinions are valid simply by having them, and that they deserve a platform to express these opinions. I’m sure you would have come across at least one video online of a young middle age — old man yelling at an audience about only sleeping 4 hours, investing, not going to university and attempting to convince them that hard work is always rewarded. As established prior, this belief is false and often driven by survivorship bias, but I want to focus specifically on the points of inherent validity of their opinions and an aversion to university or qualifications in general. I do not doubt the ability of people to teach themselves, there are hundreds of free lectures, essays and sources available online, but these comprehensive resources do not match with our shortening attention spans, people prefer short 5 minute videos, a 10 slide infographic or 15 second TikToks explaining complex topics simply, if you’re still here reading, congrats and thank you, that’s pretty impressive to be honest. This obsession with being self made (which is just not possible) leads people to avoid university, instead attempting to teach themselves all by themselves, and leads them to assume that everyone should value their opinion, regardless of their qualifications or knowledge of the field. Universities and academia do need to undergo reform in terms of accessibility and cost, but they do provide an excellent opportunity to work with others, to conduct thorough research, to talk and debate with professors, all of these opportunities lead to collective reasoning, people are exposed to entirely different worldviews and are invited to examine their own, all while learning how to work collectively. This is seen clearly in the practice of peer review, but also in the less formal class discussions, hallway conversations and debates. As Michael from Vsauce puts it, “I don’t need to learn how to fix a car AND practice medicine AND vulcanize rubber OR remember everything … other people are doing that for me just as I do things for them. We are a species of individuals that is also one big interdependent lumbering growth.” Critical thinking works best when others think with us. Take a jury for example, we use a randomised group of people to determine guilt in the criminal justice system, so that multiple perspectives, multiple inherent biases and multiple arguments can come together to hopefully reach a sound conclusion determining guilt, and it is why unanimous decisions are often required by courts. We all know what cognitive bias is and how it impacts us, for example I am likely to interpret events through the lens of class and power, this does not mean I am correct or incorrect, it is simply one perspective, which should be mixed with and critiqued by other opinions. This does not mean that the middle ground is always correct, that assumes a false equivalence of opinions, for example the commonly mocked Horseshoe Theory, which states that far left and far right stances are equally bad, but I would hope you agree that striving for equal opportunity, equal rights and true liberation is not equivalent to striving for an ethnostate, repression and a high concentration of power in a ruling class. Collaboration is essential, and to constantly outright brand all opinions different to your own as ‘unreasonable’, ‘evil’ and ‘wrong’ only leads to our detriment. Collaboration is essential, exposure to different views is essential, and committing to critical thinking is essential.

I now shift my focus to three concepts; short termism, hyperobjects and behavioural inertia. These concepts come together to impact our ability to think critically and create paralysis when action is needed most, claims such as “It is too entrenched to change”, “it’s the best we can do”, “it’s not that bad” and, my personal favourite, “it’s not that deep’’ all point back to these three concepts. Short termism is the growing tendency to look only at recent history and look only into the near future when making decisions, leading to ill informed conclusions and actions. A prime example of short termism comes in Thomas Picketty’s refutation of the Kuzents theory, Picketty showed the assumption that global inequality would lessen under capitalism was not true by looking at 200 years of recent history. Short termism is also seen in the fact that in 1900 the average history dissertation covered 75 years, but in 1975 it covered 30. When looking at our response to climate change, short termism is clear, we struggle to act despite our desperate need to do so because we struggle to look to the future. Hyperobject is a term coined by Timothy Morton, referring to issues which cover so much time and space, and which are so intertwined with so many different lives in so many different ways that ‘removing’ these hyperobjects would upheave many assumptions and structures we view as fundamental. Climate change is a great example of a hyperobject, it impacts every single person on earth, with dire consequences for some today, while others won’t feel the impacts until later. Real solutions to climate change do require significant structural changes, changes which some people feel threatened by. Hyperobjects are hard to fully comprehend, that is their nature, and they are often rather scary due to their influence, which is where we get the phrases “it’s not that deep” and “it’s the best we can do ‘’. Capitalism is itself a hyperobject, it impacts every aspect of our lives, down to the way we see nature and ourselves. We know the impact of it on mental health, systemic oppression, climate change, healthcare and science, yet we do nothing, precisely because it is such a big issue, it is far easier to deny it, and view all of these as completely separate issues, but of course, nothing happens in a vacuum, there are chains of cause and effect, and these chains are the structure of our society. Behavioural inertia is, as the name suggests, the tendency of humans to continue following the status quo, on an individual level yet also on a societal level. We are averse to significant change, especially when the subject of change is a hyperobject, as our individual thinking prefers to imagine hyperobjects as separate issues, so the conclusion from that line of thinking is that less action is required. Often those who stick with behavioural inertia will claim neutrality, but neutrality is impossible, claims of neutrality would be better translated as supporting the status quo, be it through inaction, ignorance or a conscious adherence to our perceived ‘center’. These three concepts combined lead the majority of us to believe that “there is no alternative”, when in reality a better world for all is possible, it just requires us to accept certain conclusions which may cause fear and demand action from us. The next time you feel driven to claim “it’s not that deep”, stop and think for a second, ask yourself if you’re actually denying uncomfortable, inconvenient truths.

While studying an anthropology unit at Macquarie University in late 2020/early 2021, I was exposed to the work of Desmond Manderson a professor at ANU and the founding director of the Centre for Law, Arts, and the Humanities at the university. Manderson’s work concerning symbolism piqued my interest and provided a new framework for understanding the world around me. Manderson writes in his work ‘Possessed’ that “When our friends and family behave irrationally, indulging in fears and behaviours that even they concede are dysfunctional, perhaps we suggest that they see an analyst. It is their irrational impulses that need to be understood if they are to change.” Manderson’s work provides, in his words, “a psychoanalytic account of institutional action.” Although he applies his work to law and particularly drug law, I have seen many areas where the framework is applicable. First we must establish ‘moral theatre’, a demonstration produced, directed by, and starring the state. The state uses moral theatre as a means to portray themselves as a force for good, against evil actors. Manderson uses the example of witches and Witchcraft Acts as a historical example, arguing the idea of witches served as an actor in a play of the Church, where witches were seen as having been seduced by the devil, and serving as the means through which evil entered the world. This served two main purposes; explaining where evil comes from, which necessitated the need for the church to retain its authority, and the ability to brand dissident women as evil and a threat to society, so that the ruling class did not need to justify the oppression of women. All of the evidence suggests that drug harm reduction policy produces the best outcome for everyone, whereas ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy causes significant harm, yet our policy and public views do not reflect that. In a similar fashion, left wing ideologies are subject to this irrational symbolism. In America, we see both politicians and voters brand anything they don’t like as socialism, communism or anarchy, despite the fact that what they are referring to is far from any of those terms. Anarchism in particular is a victim of this, as most people assume anarchy is a chaotic lack of rules, when a century of political philosophy, anthropology and sociology suggests otherwise. Communism and socialism are terms which essentially have no true meaning to anyone outside the left, and even among some people who call themselves leftists, there is a significant lack of understanding. This is irrational, beyond reason, and into the realm of emotional symbolism. Communism and socialism have come to basically mean ‘evil’ to the average person, without having any reason as to why it is evil, they just accept what they have been told. A reminder here to watch Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ if you haven’t. Critical thinking is the remedy to this, I am certain that the left would be far stronger if people did not blindly accept the narrative they are fed, but contemporary moral theatre requires the left play the role of the villain, so that the state may maintain its role as the hero, despite knowing that in reality western states are far closer to any conception of the villain (seriously all of their crimes are available online like the CIA has admitted to a lot of terrible stuff, interventions in South and Latin America are common knowledge this stuff is openly available). So, consider your role as the audience of moral theater, critique the play and critically think, access the information available, the state is not the hero we like to think it is. No matter how comfortable it may be to think of ourselves as the good guys, that just isn’t true.

“At least we aren’t as bad as the USA!”, chances are, if you live outside the US, you’ve either said or heard this, and aside from being a pretty blatant whataboutism in order to avoid uncomfortable truths, it isn’t really the case. I live in Australia, and while I’m grateful that I haven’t died as a result of not being able to afford insulin, we have many, many major problems. Prior to the pandemic, about 1 in 200 people were homeless each night in Australia. Our treatment of Indigenous Australians is disgusting, Aboriginal people have a life expectancy about 8 years lower than non-aboriginal people, they make up 2% of the national population yet 27% of the national prison population, in 2019 every single child in detention in the NT was Aboriginal, Aboriginal people are 6 times more likely to commit suicide. As already discussed, our education system is severely unequal, and failing. We must stop believing the myth that Australia has no serious problems, our country is deeply broken, from our treatment of our Indigenous population, to our treatment of poor people, we are failing. Our freedom of speech is nowhere near what we imagine and desire, the case of Witness J, who underwent a secret trial and sentencing, the case of Witness K, the Identify and Disrupt bill, we are kidding ourselves if we cling to the belief that Australia is fine.

I urge you all to critically examine the beliefs you hold, especially those which are fundamental assumptions. It is hard to admit that you’re not on the side of the good guys, that you’re more likely to become homeless than a billionaire, that our governments continue to commit atrocities and crimes, that hard work will not guarantee success, that the problems we face are structural, that issues like climate change require significant changes, but we cannot let fear of reality cloud our judgement. Always ask why, not just what. Don’t accept claims at face value. We must be better, for everyone’s sake.

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