The value of critical thinking

Well, as it happens, I often reflect on my life—Is it a good life or at least a decent one? How could it be improved and what are superior ways of improvement? What are the important things? What makes a thing valuable and what makes another worthless? What should I learn from the past? What professions suit me better than others? What is friendship? How should a fair society look like? etc.

First, I think these questions should be asked and found good answers to. Of course, one could ignore them and live a life not much different from an ordinary animal, but what kind of life would that be? Let’s consider the typical animal day: hunt/forage for food, fight for territory, mate (someday maybe have offspring), excrete, sleep and then next day more or less repeat the process again till the clock stops for good.

I think people could do much better than such a life. I’m not saying some instincts, like searching for food, mating, or sleeping don’t have value. Of course they have. It’s just that maybe we could find superior ways of accomplishing them? Maybe we could fulfill an instinct through a more aesthetic experience? Or maybe we could make our lives easier by thinking about better solutions to procedures we often take for granted? Maybe there is value in things beyond basic instincts, in things like having harmony among the members of a group, or trying to solve a puzzle, or finding answers to interesting questions, or enjoying an intelligent conversation, a good work of art? If the crucial difference between us and the ordinary animal is a superior brain, why not put it to good use?

Second, I’m sure I’m not the only one asking this kind of questions. My answers to them will probably be different from other answers, but—I will provide good reasons, good explanations why I think the way I think. And if others, after subjecting my proposed reasons to careful scrutiny (I wouldn’t have much respect for them if they simply took what I’m saying on faith), find those reasons acceptable, then who knows, maybe we’ll find that we have common grounds to make our society a better one after all…

There is another aspect worth taking into consideration. If we don’t find the important answers ourselves, others will find them, under their own interpretation. They certainly will see value in using their reason and they will, as it often happens, impose their life vision on us, and maybe that vision wouldn’t be a fair one. We only have to study our history to realize the reality of this.