'El sueño de la razón produce monstruos' is an etching by Goya.The sleep of reason does produce monsters, monsters of ignorance and folly.
When we don't think then reason is in danger.
Without critical reflection on what we are being told and what is going on around us then we are in danger.
We are in danger of becoming a society in thrall to spectacle and base emotions.Oh.
Alternately, the sleep of reason can produce creative monsters but that's not what I'm trying to say...
ReplyDeleteCritical thinking is fine, the trouble is that most critical thinking isn't critical enough. It is merely going through the motions of philosophy. I myself have no interest in 'what I'm told' so have no need to critically reflect on it. I think we are quite capable of generating liberating thought without basing it on on something that requires telling to us. While something you have been told may prove useful in pointing out a direction, after that it is down to you. But if you mean things we have been told via parents, school, newspapers, television, books, and the like, that's conditioning. Some conditioning to counter that can be useful, such as the notion that everything you have been told is wrong, but again it's down to you to see why that is the case. But clearly most people are doomed robots who not only don't think for themselves they are incapable of it. Hence we have religion to cater for that. If one cannot think for oneself, one will be bound. And for those slightly more intelligent for whom religion has no appeal, there is always the mediocrity of a declining civilization.
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