A Truth of One's Own

I'm not a fan of discussions concerning "critical thinking." Mainly because I find the point of such discussions are too often little other than a reason to be critical of other people's thinking. In this, "critical thinking" has become something of a buzzword for "coming to the predetermined correct answer."

Which is fine, as far as it goes, I guess, but I'm not really one to think that correct answers are anywhere near as common as they're made out to be. Because it's rarely important if an answer is objectively correct, so long as it works. (One can say this is also the thing about the "marketplace of ideas." It doesn't separate correct from incorrect or wisdom from folly. It separates workable from not workable and popular from unpopular.)

People believe the things that they do because it works for them to believe such things. And while I'm old enough that it should be par for the course by now, I'm still somewhat surprised that people don't seem to realize this. But maybe this is just the way things work in a society of hundreds of millions of people spread over the face of a continent; understanding people well enough to speak to them as people is slow, and seems like a lot of work. Easier to expect that those people will do the work to convince themselves, rather than whatever it is that they'd rather be doing.

To be fair, that was uncharitable of me. The fact that I don't regard the truth, whatever it may be, to have some special right to be first and foremost in people's minds doesn't license me to look down my nose at people who do. (Not that lacking a license has ever stopped me...) And I guess that's the thing about truth; everything looked different once I stopped believing that there was some singular Truth about things that it would benefit everyone to hold.

Whether I'm simply an epistemological relativist, or shade all the way into nihilism, is something that I'm going to have to think about. The two positions are different, even if they have some things in common, and so it may be best not to conflate them.

In any event, learning to become comfortable with the idea that I see the world the way that I do because (and only for as long as) it works for me was freeing. The stress of being right or wrong about the world, and constantly working to understand the difference, gradually went away. Which allowed me to focus on whether or not a given understanding of the world worked for me, rather than trying to reconcile that with some number of other understandings. It's still something of a work in progress, mainly, I think, because it tends to be a solitary pursuit, but I'm winding it a worthwhile one; if for no other reason than it becomes one fewer reason to be critical of others.