Thinking About Big Things

Illustration: "The March of Intellect"(1829), William Heath

We don't need "critical" thinking as much as we need just plain thinking. When a madman claims there is a giant faucet, so big that it takes a full day to turn the handle, and that faucet directs all the water of the Pacific Northwest to either flow naturally into the ocean or to be redirected to drought-plagued California, it shouldn't require any kind of fact-checking or research. All that is needed is thinking. Think about what the world is like, what water is like, how rivers and oceans function.

If you were tempted even for a second to believe in the magic faucet, some realistic thinking would snap you out of it. Unfortunately, we seem to be living among a population that doesn't know what the world is like or what water is like, doesn't know how rivers and oceans function, and - most of all - doesn't know how to think. Fifty, forty, even thirty years ago, if a guy like that had appeared on TV making a claim like that, people would have had a hearty laugh before changing the channel. The show would not have been renewed. A third-grader in 1955 (the year donald was in third grade) would have known immediately that the giant faucet claim was ludicrous.

Yet now, many adults seem unable to think clearly enough to understand the difference between reality and nonsense. So let's assume that the giant faucet story seems credible. Why have we never heard of it before? A faucet that could control the flow of mighty rivers would be a remarkable engineering feat. When was it built, and by whom? Was it part of the Public Works Administration in the 1930's? Why have we not seen any documentaries about it? Why is it not a famous tourist attraction? These are some of the questions a person capable of critical thinking might ask, questions a middle school student might ask. Yet no reporters have asked these questions. Surely, the vast majority of the White House press corps know that there is no magic faucet. They can easily make the truth known to the public by asking the obvious questions.

If fact-checking and research are deemed necessary, send an expedition to the headwaters of the Columbia River to look for the faucet. Spend some time in a library checking the newspaper archives and the encyclopedias for stories about the great faucet project. Ask a few hydraulic engineers if such a thing is possible. Today's "journalists" won't do that work, not even the relatively easy work of asking the person making the claim to provide supporting facts for the claim.