Before we begin, I want to define "critical thinking." We all know what it is, but your view of it may or not be the same as mine, and it's my column, so we're going to use mine. Critical thinking is simply the act of absorbing information and making a decision on its credibility, based on a reasonable combination of our own experience, the reliability of the data source, research from independent sources and other areas not of our own creation. In other words, it is the capacity not to believe something just because it's in the Washington Post.
I also want to say that the piece is not exactly about "bad girls" per se; it's not about girls at all, but it does make for a racy title that will get more people to read it, and boost my numbers so that even more advertisers will decide to sponsor the column.
The "bad girls" are actually only a way to refer to the girls in middle school and high school that are sufficiently "alpha" that the other girls want to follow them and to be like them. It is all, of course, about being popular, and if you are a girl in school, nothing is assumed to make you popular any faster than hanging out with the most popular girl's posse.
We all know that those in the posse are there not because it will make them better, but being in the posse will make them "in" and not "out." My point here is that not only does it not make them better, it makes them worse.
A day ago there was another in the interminable series of videos on some college campus or other with a bunch of lefty students chanting about something or other. My best girl asked me thoughtfully if there was a reason these snowflakes couldn't think for themselves, as their views were fairly inane and senseless on their own merit.
Naturally, I try to give a reasonable answer when it is my wife asking the question, so I thought about it. Why, I repeated back to them, did they seem so incapable of thinking critically about a topic? In this case, for example, they were claiming to be protesting about police violence against black people. Now, even including the overwhelmingly predominant situation (e.g., the Michael Brown type), where the offender is the one who rushed, attacked or otherwise threatened the policeman and got what he or she was asking for, we're talking about a couple hundred cases a year.
That got the protesters' attention. But 40-50,000 black Americans were intentionally killed last year by another class of people, i.e., not by policemen. That did not seem to be a priority to the snowflake protesters, however. It is one class of morality when the killer is a cop, generally defending themselves. It is apparently a different class of morality when the killer is taking a black life in an abortion clinic. Not a snowflake peep, even though two or three hundred times as many deaths are involved.
That the protesting college student cannot discern the difference would be shocking, until you realize this -- they don't want to discern the difference.
This is the lesson from their posse days in middle school and high school. It is not at all important to think critically, because unless the view you decide to take on is the same as the most popular girl in the class, you will not be able to be part of the posse and be "in." So why bother to think? Just take on the same opinions, such as they may be, as the right girl says, and you're good.
God forbid that you actually think about things. Galileo suffered for holding a universe-view that didn't align with the "most popular girl" of his day (Pope Urban VIII), but he had the courage to say that if you're going to stomp your feet about a couple hundred black (mostly) criminals getting killed by police, you ought to be screaming louder about a few thousand being killed by each other in Chicago, and bellowing about 40,000 innocent black children being killed in abortion clinics.
OK, Galileo was talking about the earth revolving around the sun and not vice versa. But you get the message.
Humans are curious beasts, as I once wrote here, who, being driven to replicate themselves and preserve the species, do what they can to stand out to the most attractive of the opposite sex. If that means hanging out with the most popular, well, we do it. If it means taking on views we don't subscribe to, well, we do it.
Unfortunately only the sensible amongst us regard the ability to think critically as an especially attractive attribute. But they will succeed, no matter what they look like.
Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton