Let's Get Critical! A Short Novella, Apparently

Thinking critically is one of the most precious of human abilities, second only to a sense of morality. Because of this, our topic for TOK this week feels almost too weighty to discuss. If humans could not think critically, there is no way we would have survived this long. We would not have been able to recognize threats in our environment, and would have perished as a result. The same is true of morality; if humans did not have a sense of it, we would certainly have killed one another off, or at the very least, would not have been able to develop the civilizations we have today. Therefore, I believe humans have not only a moral imperative to be critical, but a critical imperative to be moral.

My greatest goal in life is to become a doctor. The ability to save people and be of importance to others appeals to me greatly. That being said, I recognize that because other people trust you with their lives and the lives of their loved ones, it is a morally and critically demanding job. Doctors need to make split second decisions, in which their critical thinking is pushed to be readily available and correct. Your patient is on the operating table, you are in the middle of life-saving cardiac surgery, you see their blood pressure and O2 stats begin to drop at a rate that ensures you will not be able to finish the surgery without permanent damage done to their brain. You need to ask yourself, in those two seconds: Do I have the time to complete this? Does their survival in a severely disabled state outweigh their possible imminent death? You need to consider: is it better to have them succumb right now, on the table, or two days in the future because you didn't finish the surgery? This is the sort of snap-second critical thinking I expect to encounter in the medical field. Of course, you have the moral imperative to make the correct critical decision based on these considerations. You took the Hippocratic Oath, and furthermore, you will have to face the family and tell them what happened in the operating room. But then, morality hits shades of grey. Will you be liable if, after you save your patient but leave them mentally incapacitated, their family sues? They couldn't possibly know how much thought went into your decision, but in this case, your critical thinking got you into trouble. Morality did not pay off.

Another medical situation that I found interesting considering the topic (which I will attempt to make much less convoluted than the previous one) is euthanasia. If you have a patient who will do nothing but suffer for years without hope of recovery and they ask you to help them die, what do you do? Your critical thinking allows you to know that euthanasia is the best choice for your patient, and you've fulfilled your moral imperative to think critically-but, euthanasia is illegal. The law tells you that your moral ideal is morally wrong. Once again, the moral conclusion you have reached is apparently immoral. Perhaps if you hadn't thought critically, you would've just accepted the law at face value, and your morals would not have come into question.

All things considered, while I do believe that it's morally important to think critically, I also realize that thinking critically can put you in a more difficult position morally (that was a verbal tangle, geez). Also, as demonstrated in both scenarios, morality is different for each person, and where critical thinking may fortify one person's morals, it might also conflict with another's. Clearly, thinking critically can be both morally refreshing, and morally complicating.

Let's Talk About my Dorkdom

I'm a huge dork for horses. I can't explain it, they're big and scary and dirty but-I'm a huge horse dork. This love, along with my dream of being ridiculously rich, has led me to watch Road To The Maclay (which originally aired on Animal Planet 8 or 9 years ago) upwards of five times. The whole series, over and over again. A little backstory: the Maclay is a big competition for junior riders-the best junior riders in the world. It's ridiculously difficult to make it there, but as Alicia Keyes once said "if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere!" Anyways....

As I watch the show, I know who won, and I've seen her ride. I guess this must be sensory perception, because I saw her win and heard the announcer say she won. I also know that the way they portray her-as someone who is down to Earth, and cares for her animals on her own. I know this isn't true-she would absolutely not have time to do that with her schedule. Logically, she must have a groom. Someone else who isn't familiar with horse shows wouldn't be able to deduce this. I also know that, based on the "authority" way of knowing, the girl who did not win and was portrayed as a longshot, never had a chance of winning. People that I respect have asserted that only the kids who ride under famous trainers with high-six-figures horses can win. Someone who hadn't heard this may have been more likely to cheer for her and believe in the underdog. Finally, I preferred one of the trainers to the other one because I know that some of the things that the trainer I do not prefer does, and I consider them ethically wrong. This is, I believe, emotional perception! Someone who does not feel the same way as I do or know the backstory I know may not have the same preference that I do.

Anyways, I think I have sufficiently combined my nerd-dom with TOK, and over analyzed something seemingly simple-one of the cornerstones of this course, I'm coming to learn.

I Lack an Experience

SI've spent the entire two weeks since this post first popped up desperately wracking my brain for an experience of this sort, and I honestly can't think of any at all. I guess I have the most average senses in the history of humanity.

Since I can't think of a time I've sensed something differently than others (besides preferring certain foods of course, but that's not very intriguing), I figured I'd write about something (still sense related!) we've surely all heard before:

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around, does it still make a sound?

This question has been the topic of debate since philosopher George Berkely first poised it in 1710. The split of opinions resulting is obvious, and people (as people often do) have found countless ways to justify their ideas. Those that say it does not make a sound proclaim that sensations must be sensed to be real, and without a human to sense these sensations they are simply senseless. Those who say it does make a sounds justify their belief by examining the minutae of the sound itself-of course, the tree will produce kinetic energy as it falls, which will always, always be transmitted into sound energy when it hits; humans are irrelevant. Personally, I agree with the second opinion. Our senses do not determine reality as a whole, but rather our personal realities. There was an earth before humans, and a universe before the Earth, and surely sounds were emmitted without humans there to appreciate them. The first opinion is in my opinion a sign of human arrogance, and the belief that humans are for some reason more important than other living organisms. Of course, we can't KNOW that the tree would make a sound, but-and here's where I get TOK to the max-what CAN we know, if we don't sense it? I know I have a functioning brain; I'm alive, after all. I've never seen, felt, heard, tasted or smelled this brain, but I've experienced its effects. The same goes for the tree. Although I didn't sense it fall, from personal experience and mysterious "common sense", I know it made a sound even though I wasn't there to hear it. Humans only determine their personal realities; actual reality is much more concrete.

Plato's Cave

This week, we learned about Plato's allegory for enlightenment, The Cave. Pictured below is my modern take on the allegory.

 The prisoners are watching TV, where images similar to themselves are projected-as opposed to the fantastical figures of yesteryear. This is to show how our culture has become fixated with simple human interaction, like the modern Sitcom and reality television, rather than fantasy and other, more creative forms of escapist media. The people watching the screen aren't shackled like those in Plato's cave, because we are always free to escape the realm of television and Internet-it is by choice that we stay. 

The puppeteers are large media companies, such as CNN, Time Warner and Fox (among others). This is to show how large media corporations control our realities through the media we consume, and how their agendas are directly passed on to the consumer and taken as truth-just like the shadow puppets in Plato's cave were accepted to be enormous. 

The sun, which Plato used to represent truth and enlightenment, is a novel, because reading is the most basic and important form of media consumption, and it's also much more truthful and thought provoking than binge-watching Toddlers and Tiaras, or watching endless cat videos online (both of which I've definitely been guilty of on multiple occasions). The stairs to enlightenment in my cave are novels I found to be of significance to myself and society as a whole, including 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Oryx and Crake. 

In hindsight, I think my cave was weirdly detailed, but I also think it accurately portrays a modern, media-and-pop-culture-based way of interpreting Plato's Cave!

Also, the allegory made me think of The Cave by Mumford & Sons (below)

:)