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Critical thinking, so everyone could understand that everyone else has their own shit that matters to them.
The world would be a lot nicer to live in if entire groups of our society didn’t feel this incessant need to convert others to their way of thinking, be it political, cultural, or religious.
As long as one person isn’t hurting or subjugating another, IDGAF.
It seems to me groups have people have been choosing a king to do their reasoning for them since the beginning of humanity. And, the application of computers to communications and profits has significantly raised the bar of adequacy for wise decisions while (US) educational efforts have been in decline for nearly a half century.
How do we encourage the critical mass of free thinkers to break the current paradigm, let alone the ancient one?
Sincerely, does anyone see some sort of plan here? I often feel like I'm shouting into the void for little more than dying with self-respect. Can we reason our way to revolt, already?
Drive slower, you're not in a rush, it's all in your head, your home's not gonna permanently locked away if you're late, your office won't explode if you're late and if you're already late to work you're already late.
Drive. Slower.
Empathy
Basic fucking decency would be a start
Another language. It changes the way you see the world
ASL has made a shocking difference in my life, both opening me up as a more accessible person, but also finding a lot of use for it in my own file!!
"Critical Thinking" was already taken, so I'll go with my similar-but-different answer of critical evaluation of sources/information. When I was a kid, we were never to let anyone in when home alone, even to just use the phone. We were told never to believe anyone on the other side of that door that wasn't family or emergency services (and even then to call the neighbors in the latter case). Today, so many of the same people who told me this are fooled by dis- and mis-information online or believe very poor sources. Sometimes, it does fall into the trap of "my sister/brother/pet albatros shared it so it must be true!" of thinking the source is already verifies. We all should get better at this.
I've experienced this phenomenon as well and I'm always wondering if people become more naïve as they age or if this is, in fact, too much information for people from another era to process.
I think it also has to do with how previous generations established what they considered trustworthy or not.
Most of the time, the only way to confirm information would be to go to the library and look it up. Most people weren't taking the time to do that for every little factoid, especially ones that had no direct effect on their lives.
So if Jim who has a cousin who works in construction said that Mexicans were undercutting the expected pay for construction laborers, picking up all the jobs they could, and out performing their peers... well that's first hand information from someone who would know (by way of the game of telephone).
And that doesn't effect them directly in any way, so it's not being blasted to the whole world. You may never know they have this belief.
Now they see Jim on Facebook sharing some article. Well, Jim wouldn't share it unless he was sure it was true. I mean, his cousin works in construction. Combine that with sensational headlines to maximize clicks and now you go from racist belief that immigrants are industrious to "illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs"!
Plus, spreading the word can be done in a single click, regardless of relevance to any conversation.
So you combine the idea of "that person knows what they're talking about" with sensationalism mills and how damn easy it is to blast your stupid ideas out to the world with the idea that you'e just letting people know, and I think you very easily end up here.
Empathy, and I expect the why speaks for itself.
To use the bins/trash cans and stop littering. Especially on beaches, parks, reserves and on the motorway.
The fact that psychedelic drugs like mushrooms and LSD aren't as dangerous as media and politics make them out to be.
They are actually among the physically safest drugs out there, even when including caffeine and sugar. They can be used in so many ways for self-improvement and treating depressions, anxiety, PTSD and many other conditions.
The book 'How to change your Mind' by Michael Pollan is a wonderful read on the topic.
Oh yeah? Well I wish people could learn kindness.
Highroaded.
true kindness would be to not demonise and ban entheogentic medicines with thousands of years of contemporary peer review in the sickening pursuit of corporate greed
Maybe it's not just "one thing", but ethics. How to make decisions in a systematic way; how to do it in advance; how to weight morality, practicality, and aesthetics to reach a decision that you'll be satisfied with twenty years later, a decision you could explain and defend to another ethical person before or after the fact.
Is there something I can read to learn how to do this? A book or course? Or is this something gained only through experience and thought?
Critical Thinking skills. Imagine a world where everyone is able to sus out the lies, separate fact from fiction, and not fall into pitfalls of illogical thinking.
Empathy. People criticizing each other often make the same "mistakes" that are nothing but normal human behaviour. Once you understand that we are all pretty much equal, you start realizing that most bad things are sistematic. There are few bad people, most people are quite nice and forced (or taught) to behave badly
Add on top of this “maybe you don’t need to worry about criticizing others in the first place” and you’re well on your way to a happier existence.
Disclaimer: of course thinking critically is important, and there are areas where you’d be irresponsible not to be critical of others. I’m talking about the IV drip of negativity of constantly getting annoyed at things that don’t affect you.
Situational awareness.
I'm genuinely not sure whether this is a teachable skill or something more like a character trait.
How to not be evil. You'd think it's simple, but evidently not.
Because it's subjective?
EDIT: example - abortion is evil for conservatives, but it is practically good for others
"Evil" does not mean "something I don't like." Conservatives are evil by their own standards too.
Gender alone doesn't need to block you from doing things.
I wish we could learn from our mistakes.
Probabilities and basic stats. People do not think in "what are the chances" but in black and white. I think one reason is we don't teach probabilities in American schools. It drastically impacts a citizens ability to understand the news, and especially science.
Responsibility, way too many people do things without any thinking and making everything into shitshow because of not thinking
How to properly go through a four-way stop.
As a non-USA person, the existence of a four-way stop has always baffled me. I think it is the peak of awful road design. I don't think you could make a worse intersection.
My gut answer was math.
Yeah it’s not as important as decency. But fucking hell people, it’s not that scary and it teaches you to think in ways a lot of people could use to think
Class struggle
That they need to understand others in order for people to understand them. That the "tragic prince" is just a fallacy and I would really really want other people around me to appreciate art-forms more. Most of the time they find a movie good and just list the content as the reason for it's goodness, not paying attention to any of the craft and it baffles me that more people are not attached to or interested in how art-forms do the things they do.
Me: Composting
Interesting choice.
Recently local people were forced to separate bio waste from regular waste or compost bio waste themselves.
There were so many smelly failures around town for a long time and many gave up. Just small mistakes.
Digital privacy matters as much as physical privacy & we need to keep the governments & corporations out since they can constantly surveil. Method for doing so need to legal, cheap, & accessible. If decentralization is a requirement, you system that requires Amazon S3 buckets & a beefy VPS are not sufficient when these sorts of things rarely have a technical reason why they couldn’t be democraticized to run from an apartment (why some ISPs don’t let you have an IP (v6 or not) or symetric connections as bits are bits is a different matter).
