People thinking for themselves – that’s what I wish for everyone in 2021.
I’m writing this article on January 7, 2021 – the morning after the riots in Washington D.C. that lead to a breach in the Capitol while the congress and Electoral College was finalizing the confirmation of Joe Biden as the 46 President of the USA.
It seems like uncertainty, unrest, and chaos is becoming the new normal in our public interactions. We’re talking more and more about different “camps” and colliding ideologies. More people have larger platforms (and audiences) to voice their radical ideas and to add to the fire, the algorithms of our social media platforms only live to enhance the extreme views of either “camps”.
It’s hard to have tough conversations today, in a society that feels in a constant state jumping from pure survival to lowkey PTSD. But tough conversations are required for societies to move forward, because for every important societal project – people from different allegiances and political views had to come together to decide a path forward…
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is not innate, it is learned. It’s a skill that is continuously improved and fine-tuned – especially in a society where many corporations and systems are working to feed us their very convincing and tailored point of view, so we adopt them as our own…
That’s why I believe aiming to be an independent and critical thinker is so important. To understands that reasonable doubt is always welcome, and that scientifically-based evidence from reliable sources should always weigh more than the opinions of your loud neighbor. The curse of our modern world is the promise of further division if we stay ignorant, and the gift of our modern world is that the facts and the truth have never been more accessible for those who really look for it!
All of that being said,
I don’t want to dive too much in the political tensions that have hovered over the country, so let me illustrate my point with an example from the Sustainability world …
Soon after Biden was elected president, and with it the promise of overthrowing many of the regulatory work that the Trump administration had put in place to decrease climate action, General Motors suddenly withdrew from a litigation between the federal government and California where it was siding with Trump (no need to dive in the details here, but if you’re interested to learn more about the case click right here). Briefly, for months and months GM had been ACTIVELY fighting against increasing electric vehicles on the roads and in their offering, and suddenly (almost overnight – following the announcement of the new administration) they became (and re-branded themselves as) an All-Electric Future vehicle brand, as you can see from the picture taken from their website below: .
Truth is,
Every individual, organization and corporation has an agenda, so next time you see an organization so proudly flaunting their climate goals – be wary. Because behind the curtains, there are most likely regulations driving the decisions, investors pressuring the executives, and people profiting from the shift. Not that it is pure evil, and my aim here is not to shame GM (who is far from the only company to be this hypocrite), but the truth is often not what is presented to us. Additionally, in most cases, for real climate action, most companies can be doing SOOO much more than what they commit to. Real climate action starts by fighting against this overconsumption philosophy that we’ve created, but that’s a topic for another day!
Believe me, my goal is not to promote cynicism, but promoting a healthy way of approaching news, media and general information provided to us, with skepticism and a desire to learn more (if it’s a subject that is dear to you – or at the least a subject you are going to engage in)…
And I can’t ask anyone to do anything, I can only hope that my small contribution is a testament to that…
