carlespiemaryalice

Thorns protect roses from those that would feed on them.

To many, the most dangerous and to a few, the most important kind of person, is the one who thinks critically. Dangerous because such a person is difficult to control or manipulate with rhetoric or specious explanations. Important, for the same reasons. These people are a counter-weight to the sycophants and a threat to the powerful. The lenses through which they see this reality are cut from a different type of glass; they perceive what others only see.

Thinking critically, however, is difficult work and many times, annoying to others. One of the most annoying tools of critical thinking is questioning what others accept as true. Challenging norms or convention often leads to being criticized for asking, “Why?” or “How can that be true, if this is true?” The more cherished a belief or the more popular it is, the more irritating any challenge to its acceptance. But critical thinkers do not challenge just to be contrary; they seek to be enlightened.

When not being an irritant, a critical thinker is often considered “weird” because she/he will often ponder what others never even consider. For example, “Why is there such a thing as beauty?” or “Why is the universe so vast?” “Why are all polar bears left-handed?” “Are there other infinities besides space, time and numbers?” “If there is such a thing as free will, then why is there such a thing [given the state of human affairs] vis a vis the fact that other animals, from which many believe we evolved, act mostly on instinct?”

If only I could be such a paragon; I live to be one of them. They are the thorns of society without which its rose would easily be devoured and any beauty lost.