Critical thinking is an essential life skill that you will never learn as a JW. Without us even realising it, the Organisation trains us not to think too critically about anything, and it can take years to understand or even notice the full extent of the impact on our critical thinking skills.

If you enjoy watching ex-JW YouTube activists, you have likely also heard them highlighting various issues with JW teachings, rhetoric, and logic that they just couldn’t see before because they didn’t have the ability to think critically about it at the time.

But what actually is critical thinking? Why does the organisation stop members from thinking critically, and how do they do it? And most importantly, how do you learn to think critically after having so little practice or encouragement to do so?

What is critical thinking?

As mentioned in an earlier post, critical thinking is ‘the art of analyzing and evaluating our thinking with a view to improving it’[1]. This means developing the ability to monitor and correct your own thoughts and beliefs in light of new (or newly found) evidence, and that evidence needs to come from a variety of reliable, unbiassed, and well-informed, sources.

It requires you to see past your own ego and other social norms, which means not just believing something because:

• You want to believe it
• You have always believed it
• It is in your selfish interests to believe it
• Someone said so
• Others in your group believe it so you should too
• Your group/culture is superior to all others and therefore must be right, (despite knowing nothing about the other groups or culture other than what you have learnt from your own).

Why is it important?

Quite simply, critical thinking is important because it will improve the quality of your life.

Critical thinking helps you develop and grow throughout your lifetime, rather than stagnate in one fixed opinion or mindset for your entire life. It will help you to see things from a different point of view and will ensure you remain open to changing your view if and when new information comes along.

Critical thinking will also help you to respect others and their opinions, even if you don’t agree with them, because you will also have a better understanding of where they may be coming from and why change may be hard for them.

Critical thinking helps you make better life decisions, have better relationships with others, improves your mental health because you can grow and change as you need to, and generally improves the overall quality of your life and life satisfaction.

The most important reason though, particularly for those of us who have left a cult or high-control group, is that critical thinking will ensure that you to never again fall prey to an organisation, group, or way of life that does not have your best interests at heart.

Why does the Organisation stop members from thinking critically?

The Organisation needs to stop members from thinking critically about their teachings, beliefs, doctrines, and culture because they are fully aware that if you do, you will come to the stark realisation that you are being manipulated and lied to. At this point, either you will leave, or you will spread that information about before you get kicked out, potentially causing others to leave. And without members, the Organisation would not exist.

How does the Organisation stop members from thinking critically?

The Organisation has many methods for suppressing members’ ability to think critically, and the most common ways this is done is through black and white thinking and thought-stopping techniques.

Black and white thinking induces fear of anything perceived as ‘bad’. It puts you in one of two groups, the good group, or the bad group, and quite predictably, only their group is the good group. So if you are not with them, you are against them. It’s very ‘black and white’, with no allowance for the many shades of grey.

Examples from the JW Organisation include all the rhetoric about ‘us/’God’s people’ versus the World’. Their main narrative is God Vs Satan, Good Vs Evil, and they make it very clear that the only way to show your support for the ‘good’ side, God and Jesus, and to survive Armageddon, is to be within the Organisation. Anything ‘worldly’ or ‘apostate’ has extremely negative, even Satanic, connotations, which instils fear of being part of the world. If you truly love Jehovah and Jesus, the last thing you will want to do is to show any support for Satan and only bad things will happen to you if you do.

Thought-stopping techniques ensure members don’t think too much. They are like conversation stoppers for the brain, ensuring any questioning or doubt is nipped in the bud before it becomes a problem.

Examples from the JW Organisation include keeping members far too busy to allow any doubt to manifest (remember your busy theocratic schedule?), instilling fear of doubt because of what it could lead to (leaving the only group on earth who is serving God ‘correctly’), not tolerating any variance from the groups beliefs (again, because any belief that is not in alignment with the Organisation is ‘bad), discouraging bible discussions that don’t involve the Organisation in some way (so that they can make sure the conversations don’t stray too far from the ‘truth’), and urging members to report those who voiced doubt or concerns to the elders so that they can receive ‘encouragement’.

The JW judicial system is also an incredibly effective thought-stopping technique. Just knowing you could be hauled in front of the elders to explain yourself, potentially lose your ‘clean’ standing in the Organisation and be shut off from your friends and family if you get disfellowshipped, is a powerful way to ensure members suppress any doubts and remain on the straight and narrow.

Black and white thinking and thought-stopping techniques ensure that anything that remotely resembles critical thinking will be either prevented or shut down. Remember how the word ‘apostate’ used to make you feel? That is the result of black and white thinking. Remember your unerring ability to excuse anything you didn’t understand or agree with because it was ‘the truth’?  And how you would shut down conversations that didn’t fit with the JW narrative? That is all down to thought-stopping techniques.

How can I develop my critical thinking skills?

The critical thinking process involves the following steps:

• Defining the topic or issue in question
• Identifying complexities and inter-relationships with other topics or issues
• Accessing and assessing relevant information, data, and evidence from a range of sources
• Identifying the biases, viewpoints, and inaccuracies in those sources
• Interpreting the information and drawing inferences from it
• Drawing conclusions based on those inferences
• Recognising any assumptions and implications you are making in coming to those conclusions
• Being open to having your conclusions challenged[2]

In the next post we will apply the above steps to a claim made in the November 2013 Study Edition of the Watchtower. It is a paragraph that seems rather innocuous as far as JW rhetoric goes, but is a great example of just how much can be unpacked when you apply the above critical thinking skills.

Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you in the next one :o)

Renee

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[1]  Dr Richard Paul & Dr Linda Elder (2008), The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools. www.criticalthinking.org

[2] Adapted from Dr Richard Paul & Dr Linda Elder (2008), The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools. www.criticalthinking.org