rights and expectations

 The hardest person to convince of anything should be yourself. That's my feeling. Call me a skeptic if you will but that is how I view things. I'm fully aware that no matter what I do, whatever talent I may possess, there is someone out there that can do it better. It's just a simple fact. Of that, I am convinced. It's not a bad thing, this skepticism, as skeptics are seldom disappointed. In fact, skeptics often find more to celebrate than others simply because they aren't expecting anything. I love surprises of a positive nature. I have said it more than once and it remains true, I love it when I can say, told you so. I believe we all like to be right, to be correct in our assumptions or conclusions. That is why we all sought that star on our papers when we were in elementary school. It's the reason for trophies, ribbons and medals. They are visible signs that we were right! Yes, it very satisfying to be able to say, told you so.

  It's a problem I see developing today, too many expectations. We are teaching our children to expect this or that, and indeed that they have a right to this or that. It's a far cry from the attitude of my youth. Freedom arrived when you were eighteen. That's the way it worked back then. I often heard this statement; as long as you live under my roof, you will live by my rules. It was a life lesson in independence. As long as you remained dependent, you remained obligated. You were obligated to comply with the rule. You didn't have to agree with the rule, like the rule, but you were obligated to follow that rule. You learned that when you did the right thing you could expect a positive result. Oh, it didn't always happen, there were disappointments, but for the most part if you were right, it went your way. Expecting others to change their views, their rules or conventions would definitely lead to disappointment. That wasn't happening. We weren't aware of it way back then, but what we were being taught was critical thinking skills. 

  I looked that up as I have heard of this skill, critical thinking, and became curious what that was. Here's what I found.  " Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments in order to form a judgement by the application of rational, skeptical, and unbiased analyses and evaluation. " I'm not aware of who wrote that definition as no credit to the author is given by Wikipedia, but I had to smile when I read about being rational and skeptical. Yes, that is what I was taught as a kid alright. "If you think you're going out of the house looking like that you've got another think coming." If you had given any rational thought to that choice, you would have been skeptical about being allowed to wear it. In other words, you wouldn't be a bit surprised by the reaction you received. You wouldn't have any expectation that it would be allowed, but you would be pleasantly surprised if mom or dad let that slide. You reached that conclusion based on the available facts, evidence and observations and arguments. Yeah, it wasn't the first time you were faced with that situation. Didn't mean you wouldn't try, just that you did so with a measure of skepticism and no expectation of success. 

  There is definitely a lack of critical thinking going on today. If you believe that Bruce Jenner is now a woman, you haven't applied any critical thinking skills to the question. If you think your gender is fluid, you aren't using critical thinking skills. If you think Bidenomics is working, you surely haven't applied any critical thinking to the issue. If you believe the problem with gun violence is the gun, who really do need to take a closer critical look at that. If you think borrowing money from China to give to Ukraine while we have a debt of 31.3 trillion dollars is a good idea, you have failed the course on critical thinking. There are many other examples I could list taking place today that surely wouldn't have happened fifty years ago. A transgender person winning a beauty contest? That's critical thinking. No, that's nonsense. You don't like it, you wanna cry about that. I'll give you something to cry about. Now that thinking was critical to your survival. You just might want to reconsider your choice.