PAKISTANI CRITICAL THINKING

After reading the article on critical thinking and finally understanding what it meant, I realized that that is exactly what a country like Pakistan needs and lacks- critical thinkers! I don’t think I have ever really come across a person who thinks critically. Sure we all claim to be logical and ‘open minded’ but there is always a part of us that thinks only according to the definitions and norms conditioned in us since birth. Robert Ennis’s classic definition is ‘critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.” Maybe some people in Pakistan do critically think but there is always some area of their lives where rationality and logic do not apply. Be it with their religion, their culture, ethnicity or family/children.

 I think every leader should be a critical thinker. He/she should work in the present and plan for the future. They should evaluate, analyze, interpret everything from all directions, taking into account everyone’s view point and then making a rational, logical and reasonable decision, keeping in mind the pros and cons of it and without being judgmental or biased. But the leaders of Pakistan are almost the opposite. First of all they never respect each other’s points of view. Each of them is of some party or another who do not get along and never try to appreciate or even consider another’s point of view or idea. They all support their own ethnicity and encourage ethnocentrism to the full. These are the reasons why nowadays there are so many differences and bitterness between the all the ethnic groups and provinces. Things are so bad that they kill each other’s leaders or people and cause havoc in the cities. Where did this hatred come from? It came from our leaders’ inability to think critically and think of the consequences of supporting and favoring one group over another and creating differences between them. Even our very own president openly demonstrates his love for Sindhi’s because he knows he will get votes and support. He has even worn the Sindhi traditional dress of the “ajrak” and “topi” internationally! Fine he loves his culture, we can respect that but at the end of the day he is the president of Pakistan, not the president of Sind. He should know that every step he takes can have consequences, good or bad.

When it comes to religion, people automatically start thinking with their emotions. Religion is an extremely sensitive and touchy topic here. People fight over it, die for it, kill for it and forget all reasoning because of it. I’m not saying religion is illogical but people tend to put their emotions first when anything is related to their faith and beliefs and they refuse to think that another point of view or opinion apart from their is right. A recent example would be the thing with the Nepal mosque and people instantly believing the video is true and calling it a miracle of Islam. Now I’m not saying it’s not true. I myself believe that Allah can do anything; I can never bring myself to question Him. But I won’t believe that that video is true unless they prove it. The same thing happened a year ago with the Russian baby boy who had verses of the Quran written all over his boy. Everyone thought it was a miracle and thousands of people started going to his house as if it were a shrine. In the end it turned out that the poor one year old kid had a skin disease that if you make any mark on his skin with even your finger, the mark would stay there for a few days. His own father used to write verses of the Quran on his skin and tell the people they appear on their own, despite the fact that his son go really sick every time he did it.

So basically yes we Pakistani’s are in great need of critical thinking. Also especially since we are prone to sudden emergencies and chaotic situations like riots, target killing, terrorist attacks etc, we need to improve our critical thinking skills in order to make better decisions and judgments.