1A. The authors argue that critical thinking is “hard work.” They also provide examples of self-reflective questions that help us develop “strong sense” critical thinking. They also propose “serious thinking about thinking is rare in human life” (page xxi). Define and discuss what you think the authors mean by “that serious thinking is rare in human life.”

“Serious thinking is rare in human life”.
Thinking is so much like breathing to us; we do it but don’t necessarily think about why we are doing it, how we do it or truly how necessary it is to our lives. It primarily occurs in the background unless it is brought to the forefront for some specific reason that is, in a sense, forced upon us. This may be in work, school or some event in our personal lives that require us to ‘stop and think’. I believe this is what the authors are focusing on when they say that serious thinking is rare. As we go about our lives, especially as adults, thinking is just something we do much like breathing. Personally, I feel like I have thought more about everything on a regular basis, including my thinking, when I was a child than I do now. This may have been because I was more curious and did not fully understand anything. I was constantly forced to think about subjects and subsequently about why I came to whatever derived conclusion. However, as we get older, we think we know what we know because we have already learned it and stick to that rather than questioning the ‘why’ and from where this knowledge is coming. As our lives become more focused on one thing, such as a career, we learn what we need to about that to be successful and everything else becomes merely automatic to what we already know without necessarily having to think deeply about everything related to that career over and over again.
From youth, we learn ways to get things done quickly, how and why to do it and make decisions based on other learned actions on what is considered ‘correct’. For example, many people learned that continuing education is very important and that they should always strive to be more