Critical Thinking And Good Judgement

I have often told my children that the greatest value of education is that it improves judgment.

Yet many people who are educated have poor judgment. How can this be? The key I believe is critical thinking. Especially self-aware critical thinking.

So what is critical thinking? In essence it is thinking rationally in all aspects.  Especially about your own thoughts and actions. Some would call it mindfulness but it is more than that. It is mindfulness grounded in reality. Perhaps it is easier to look at a few examples of not thinking critically.

• Being convinced an unknown light in the sky is an alien spaceship. 
• Believing a squeak in your house is ghost/fairy/poltergeist/gremlin/leprechaun.
• Believing you have superhero powers and if you just concentrate hard enough you can move objects. Like a Jedi.
• Committing perjury in court like Spring did, yet maintaining that you are a good person and not a criminal. 
• Blatantly breaking the Lawyers Code of Professional Conduct and the law as Nelly Wince did yet believing that you are moral person and upright lawyer. 
• Being responsible for disciplining attorneys who break the Lawyers Code of Professional Conduct as the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board (LPRB) is, yet mostly doing the exact opposite - shielding lawyers from the consequences of their unethical and criminal actions. 
• Knowingly providing false information in order to cover up a crime as County Attorney Bennie Sonsang did. 

Now possibly Spring, Nelly Wince, the LPRB and Bennie Sonsang do think critically and know their actions are abhorrent and criminal but I really doubt it. I think they, like most people who do bad things, mentally avoid thinking critically about their actions. They live delusional lives. 

This delusional thinking is the root cause of nearly all bad things humans do to each other.