Critical Thinking: Choices – Are they Real?

Recently had a dream, and oddly it involved critical thinking skills along with critical thinking questions.

I was in a classroom and posed a question to the class and teacher. The scenario involved individual choices, due to the class discussing ramifications on choice. One student became ill due to an action involving poor choices.

I cannot recall my exact wordage, but below is the question I had paraphrased.

Understanding each of us is responsible for our choices and the effects they bring, I have a question. Let’s say an individual has two choices to make. The individual makes a seemingly poor decision. The result is being sick or an ill effect. You cannot narrow it down to only two decisions. What about all other factors outside the individual’s control that influenced the choices. Would this negate the individual’s true choice? In this knowledge, perhaps the individual truly did not have only two choices. Perhaps he or she had only one.

To make this more complex, what if the ill-fated choice was actually a better choice. By multiple factors and other variables, the other outcome is worse (death). With this new perception and understanding, his or her poor choice was actually the better alternative.

With these two in mind, the individual would now justify bad behavior, by applying the mentality ‘it could be worse.’ See the dilemma?

No clue, why I was dreaming this. However, it does pose an interesting thought. I often quote the stoic idea, we can only control our own reactions and actions, not external factors. However, what if those external factors pre-dispose our own confined control?

In business, external factors always play a role in how the company can react. External factors also play a huge role in our personal life as well.

Thoughts? I would love your thoughts on this idea.

Matt Cole has high regard for knowledge share. He has a desire to share critical thinking and information. With a Masters in Information Technology and a wide array of certifications, while not working full-time, he wishes to knowledge share through providing insight, information organization, and critical thinking skills.

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