“Every person we save is one less zombie to fight.” ―World War Z, 2013 film
What is the great lesson of 2020? A pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people and ravaged economies while people disagreed on basic facts. Conspiracy beliefs ran amok. Unscientific racism surged on social media. Medical quackery enjoyed a boom year. What was the common thread that ran through all of it? What should we have learned from such an extraordinarily eventful year?
The crucial ever-present factor in 2020 was critical thinking. Those who thought well were less likely to tumble into the rabbit holes of thinking QAnon is true, COVID-19 is a hoax, 5G towers help spread the virus, racism is scientific, hydroxychloroquine cures COVID-19, demon sperm is a problem, tracking devices are in vaccines, there is mass election fraud, etc. The ability and willingness to lean toward evidence and logic rather than side with blind trust and emotion was the key metric behind the madness. We may view the current year, 2021, as the test to see if we were paying attention in 2020. So far, it doesn’t look good.
The January 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol Building by rioters and vandals was more evidence that political propaganda and irrational beliefs have reached crisis levels. Millions of Americans now seem hypnotized by dishonest news sources, medical quackery claims, social media manipulation, and preposterous conspiracy beliefs. Some unknown number of them are willing to break laws and threaten others with violence. We can passively wait and hope that this dangerous offshoot from comparatively harmless believers shrinks, or our society can make intelligent proactive efforts toward ensuring that it does not become a greater problem.
Gullibility, fanaticism, and political trickery are not new, of course. America has always suffered a costly love affair with fraud and fantasy (Anderson 2017). But it all feels faster, louder, and more dangerous these days. One no longer needs to be a charismatic apocalyptic preacher with a brick-and-mortar church or a well-funded politician to pollute minds at a steady clip. Today anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account has the potential power to ignite wildfires of public lunacy.
The Capitol insurrection was a tornado strike made of swirling irrational beliefs, a national self-inflicted wound that never should have happened. A sitting U.S. president and his allies used television, radio, and social media to weaponize some of the most gullible people in America. Key instruments of modern communication could be informing, entertaining, and uplifting us almost exclusively. Increasingly, however, they are maliciously exploited to infect vulnerable people with mental viruses that transform them into either tragic fools or dangerously deranged mission-focused zombies (Harrison 2017). But it may only get worse. The next level of synthetic video/audio media, called deepfakes, is nearly impossible to identify as false, and an avalanche of it is about to drop on our heads (Westerlund 2019).
Our present course may be unsustainable. The synergy of increasingly sophisticated deception aimed at unthinking masses promises more crippling confusion, disruption, and chaos, perhaps more than America can endure. Every minute worrying about nefarious microchips in vaccines is time not spent intelligently evaluating risk and assessing evidence. Every day sacrificed at the altar of a conspiracy belief or at the feet of a hollow demagogue is another day lost to possible social and political progress for all.
Our best hope is to attack the source of the problem. But what is it? What is the real root of this crisis, and what is the solution most likely to work? Attempting to corral or mute those who promote fraud and bad beliefs will not work. Another con artist will always be waiting in the shadows, and disturbed minds will keep conjuring up baseless beliefs. The reason our problem of mass delusions and rampant disinformation can exist to the degree it currently does is because too many American minds are incapable of handling close encounters of the irrational kind. The key problem is that America is a nation of believers more than a nation of thinkers. Therefore, our primary target should not be the few who sell lies and fantasies but the many who so eagerly buy them.
Vast numbers of people do not know how to think critically and are insufficiently aware of how easy it can be for anyone, regardless of general education or intelligence, to be lured into a bogus belief. This abundance of unprotected minds provides the necessary foundation for our growing crisis. Minus many millions of people in such a vulnerable state, empty claims and ridiculous beliefs could not rage across the land collecting converts with the ease they do now.
I detail the problem of conspiracy theory belief in one of my books, Good Thinking, and explain how gossip naturally appeals to us and makes us feel special when we know something others do not (Harrison 2013a). Confirmation bias, a troublesome process even the best of minds contend with, helps cement these beliefs by making them seem logical and evidence based. Familiarity with this and other such information makes people significantly less vulnerable. Bad beliefs can take root in any mind, even one that may be gifted and filled with knowledge. Some conspiracy believers demonstrate remarkable mental sharpness and vigor in protecting the nonsense inhabiting their heads. Picture a world-class lawyer skillfully and effectively defending a guilty client. General ignorance, or what some might describe as innate stupidity, are not the key problems. This crisis grows not from no thinking but from bad thinking.
If you are skeptical of the claim that America is in the midst of a critical thinking crisis, consider that many (possibly most) of the January 6 Capitol rioters were QAnon believers. Going all in with QAnon means believing that a long list of celebrities and political elites—including Lady Gaga, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, and Tom Hanks—operate an international satanic cannibalistic child sex-abuse organization. It is a claim so extraordinarily vacuous that it can almost serve as the perfect litmus test for the pathological absence of critical thinking.
QAnon is a movement with no clearly identified founders or leaders and no formal doctrine. It is a big-tent/grab-bag of many old and new conspiracy theories. It accommodates a long list of suspicions, fears, resentments, and prejudices (Blaskiewicz 2018). QAnon is the Costco of conspiracy theories, the Walmart of weird beliefs: “Whatever you want, we got it.” It also has a Da Vinci Code element that seems to appeal to many believers who excitedly search for clues and follow online crumbs toward big “revelations.” Despite the absence of any credible evidence and the overwhelming unlikeliness of it all, the combination of fuzziness, inclusiveness, and flexibility is working. QAnon has sucked up millions of unprepared minds in recent years. [See Part 2 of Stephanie Kemmerer’s two-part article on QAnon in this issue.]
According to a recent NPR/IPSOS national poll, less than half (47 percent) of Americans say QAnon’s core claims are false (Newall 2020). Seventeen percent of U.S. adults—millions of voting-age citizens—admit to believing. Also alarming: 37 percent are “unsure.” Imagine being on the fence about whether Tom Hanks and Beyoncé are working with Satan to traffic child sex-slaves around the world.
As if it were not interesting enough already, some people include lizard aliens in the QAnon recipe (Wallis 2021). These infiltrators from outer space supposedly include Queen Elizabeth, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The usual claim is that they are either shapeshifters or merely hiding beneath human skinsuits. This is not how the twenty-first century was supposed to be going for us. As a child nurtured on Star Trek reruns, I imagined our species solving poverty, ending war, and colonizing other worlds by now. Silly me. Here I am today discussing a popular belief that reptilian extraterrestrials reside in Buckingham Palace.
How can we prevent QAnon and other such beliefs from corroding our nation’s collective sanity to the point of no return? Unfortunately, there is no quick fix available. But there is a preventive treatment. Most won’t like it because it’s slow and involves a lot of work. But it is a solution, perhaps the only one with a fair chance of success. Playing the long game of critical thinking education is the only way to deny the irrational-belief beast and the steady supply of victims it depends on.
Extreme political manipulation, social media idiocy, QAnon, and other cognitive disasters likely would dry up and shrink to insignificance if robbed of their current deep pool of unquestioning targets ready for assimilation. Those who understand the need to stop America’s slide into ever-deepening irrationality must push our society to raise up new generations of thinking citizens who are capable of identifying and shrugging off unproven claims. The American mind can be repaired in the long term by teaching the skills and principles of critical thinking to every child. I am aware of the grandiose and cliché-like feel that comes with citing education as the only salvation from a big problem. But in this case, it really is the way.
Making critical thinking a national educational norm is the cognitive vaccine America needs to have a fighting chance of maintaining sufficient sanity. Good thinking prevents and alleviates bad thinking. Young students can be taught reason and skepticism as basic life skills. This would not be the kind of education that involves learning a bunch of facts for later regurgitation. Critical thinking is more like learning a trade. As one might train to weld or build furniture, one can learn how to think well out in the world.
Critical thinking courses for all elementary, middle school, and high school students might include age-appropriate lessons on how to ask the right questions when confronted with an unusual or important claim; a review of common logical fallacies (with an emphasis on relevance to everyday experiences); how to select reliable information sources; a basic survey of the surprising but normal workings of a human brain (how the brain processes visual input, seeks patterns, why memory is unreliable, subconscious influence on conscious thinking, etc.); review how the “critical thinking” concept can be abused and misrepresented (Many QAnon believers, for example, urge people to “think critically” and often say “do your own research”. But this means little when poor information sources, flawed logic, and bogus evidence are attached to such advice.); historical review of past mass delusions, frauds, and costly mistakes rooted in poor thinking; and discussions about the many positive benefits of good thinking (increased odds for a safer, more efficient, and productive life).
Given its importance to individual and national health, why not teach critical thinking every day in every school? Why not give it the same attention and emphasis as reading, mathematics, the Pledge of Allegiance, or anything else? Doing this would not preclude addressing the social and health needs of struggling Americans. It would not stand in the way of the need for intelligent social media regulation, vigilance against domestic terrorism, or general science and history education.
As a parent and former teacher, I have seen how easily young students can pick this up. With guidance and encouragement, children can become highly proficient at thinking their way through spurious claims, recognizing potential problems of perception, and spotting bias and lies. From the earliest ages possible, children in the United States, and all countries, should be taught thinking skills because it will serve them well throughout their entire lives. It also just may save our civilization from implosion one day.
Having written several books and given many lectures and interviews on this topic, I know from experience that some people cringe, if not shriek in horror, at the thought of teaching critical thinking to ten-year-olds. But these concerns seem rooted in a misunderstanding of what critical thinking is. To be clear, it is not a list of approved ideas and taboo beliefs. Critical thinking is the means of figuring out if something makes sense and is likely to be true or not. Nothing is threatened apart from lies and errors in reasoning. Hopefully, one would want these exposed to avoid wasting time, energy, or money or risking good health. Thomas Paine put it well: “It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”
Anyone who opposes critical thinking education is effectively taking a position against reason and reality.
Considering the current American landscape, this is inexcusable stark negligence (Uscinski 2019). We cannot continue to fail so many children. They need the necessary tools to be able to navigate the increasingly complex and foreboding information jungles of twenty-first-century civilization. We owe students better than leaving them to exit schools on graduation day as soft targets for con artists and victims-in-waiting for delusion peddlers.
“Critical thinking” is viewed by some as code for “condescension and elitism.” This is another unfair judgment. No one owns a patent on thinking well. No one can keep this from you if you want it, regardless of age, income, education, or social status. Relying on critical thinking as a matter of daily routine is a personal choice. It is the attempt to get most things right most of the time. This is too useful, too vital now to be left to university philosophy classes or spurned as a sign of intellectual snobbery. Critical thinking is a collection of down-in-the-trenches people skills that are available to everyone (Harrison 2013b). It’s about doing the work to figure out important things based on reason more than emotion and on analysis more than trust or tradition. It also means reevaluating conclusions and changing your mind when it makes sense to do so. Put simply, this is the conscious attempt to dodge lies and false beliefs while moving in the general direction of truth and reality. There is no more reliable safeguard against becoming someone’s fool or the sad pawn of an empty fantasy.
This is on us, the grownups. Adults who see the value and need for teaching reason-based, independent thinking to all children must act. Push politicians, school boards, and parents to prepare children for the countless lies, irrational temptations, and cognitive landmines they will encounter in life. What else can we do? The U.S. government cannot outlaw the inclination to believe nonsense. Regulations won’t purge the internet of every lie. Our brains are not going to suddenly evolve beyond their natural tendencies to lead us astray when it comes to perceiving and calculating reality. The answer lies with us. Teach our children thinking skills so that they can be their own editors and fact checkers. Children who grow up in this century must be their own guardians of truth. But they will fall short unless someone cares enough to teach them how.
References
Anderson, Kurt. 2017. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. New York, NY: Random House.
Blaskiewicz, Robert. 2018. Of course, Qanon. Skeptical Inquirer online (August 9). Available online at /exclusive/of-course-qanon1/.
Harrison, Guy P. 2013a. Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 215–229.
———. 2013b. Think: Why You Should Question Everything. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
———. 2017. Think Before You Like: Social Media’s Effect on the Brain and the Tools You Need to Navigate Your Newsfeed. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Newall, Mallory. 2020. More than 1 in 3 Americans believe a “deep state” is working to undermine Trump. IPSOS (December 30). Available online at https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/npr-misinformation-123020.
Uscinski, Joseph E. 2019. Conspiring for the common good. Skeptical Inquirer 43(4) (July/August): 40–44.
Wallis, Paul. 2021. Op-Ed: Biden is JFK Jr in a mask and an intergalactic being, says QAnon. Digital Journal (January 16). Available online at http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/op-ed-biden-is-jfk-jr-in-a-mask-and-an-intergalactic-being-says-qanon/article/584035#ixzz6l4GkXuOo.
Westerlund, Mika. 2019. The emergence of deepfake technology: A review. Technology Innovation Management Review 9: 39–52. DOI: 10.22215/timreview/1282.