Middle Nation team meeting excerpts on critical thinking

The best way to be persuasive is to be right. That's the best way to be persuasive. So you have to be you have to get the critical thinking first so that you can actually be right. Then you you already are way ahead of the game in terms of refuting any arguments or even potential arguments that might be made against you because you have already destroyed in your analytical process all counterarguments to the position that you've reached, to the position to the conclusion that you've reached Because you've already gone through all of that. You've already looked at all of the other possible, conclusions, and you have eliminated them from possibility because they're wrong.

So then you only you're only coming forward with what's absolutely irrefutably correct. And that's the that's the strongest point. So then you, you know, you just add on to that all of the other rhetorical skills and, you know, oratory skills and all of that ways of explaining because that's actually what an analogy is, explaining it in a way that people can understand. You're not really trying to convince them of something that's wrong. You're trying to make them understand what's right in a way that will be easier for them to process it.

Brother Hussein brings up a good point also, which is another skill under critical thinking and which is like being able to identify the parameters of a discussion and and recognize that the the parameters of the discussion do not contain the entirety of possible discussion. But that so to realize that like what he was talking about Mhmm. Like what he was talking about, you have the the the choice of one of two evils. Well, why? You say that, but why does it have to be like that?

We can we can talk on a broader scale than that. We can talk a a much larger discourse, but you're forcing me to keep within this this parameter of discussion. So that's also a critical thinking skill that you can identify that this is an artificially enforced parameter of debate or discussion. And that's actually a technique that we would want people to learn when they get into the persuasive skills. And we're just trying to make sort of a list of the things we need to work on.

You know, people are still aware of this, but they still vote for them because they have no choice, isn't it?

Well, that's a that's a good exam I think that's a good example. Anyway, that you choose the two party thing or whatever. It's always within a certain paradigm, isn't it? And those two, they they they when there's two sides, they're happy to keep it in that yeah. Kind of And the way you started talking about, you know, the the Zionist thing with the we're we're just we're eating our popcorn watching the kind of same old slogans coming out from from both sides.

Like, that is another that is part of that technique that keeps people in a

Well, I mean, right. Again, I don't wanna I don't wanna derail it into a very specific topic, but there's there's also a and if no. No. No. No.

Not you, brother. But there's even a trickier thing going on with the with the binary, which is that it's not binary at all. There's not a difference. So, you know, just by even Yeah. Yeah.

By even by even portraying it portraying it to you as a binary, you're you're you're telling yourself, oh, I only have these two choices. No. You don't. You've got one choice. It doesn't make any difference.

I mean, it's because it's not just a it's something that is used as a debate tactic, but it's not, in and of itself a debate tactic. Understanding the, controlled parameters of discourse is something that you need to be able to do, again, in order to be objective and to understand reality as it actually is rather than the way it's being fed to you. So it is something that you use in debate, but it's not only a debate tactic. It's a it's a it's part of understanding the world as it actually is. Like I said, they try to make you think that you have two choices because you only have one choice.

This is this is something that you have to understand in reality, you know, so that that you can use it in a debate. And that's, again, when we get into the persuasive skills and the, you know, con convincing oratory and stuff like that, then you can talk about all of these, as brother said, in terms of debate and in terms of convincing speech and, you know, being influential in the way you talk and the way you present things. You'll learn to employ those things, but you have to be able to identify them when they're being done to you so that you can understand the world objectively again. You'll end up being someone who their understanding of the world is being dictated to them. That's all.

And that's just not what we want, obviously. No. I mean, I think I think he wasn't talking necessarily about how to combat it because we we know how to combat directly. Just talking about that as one of the things that interferes with objectivity is. But I think even with even with the, is is using generally the interferences with objectivity that already exist.

The the the biases that already exist, he activates them. The suspicions that exist, he activates them. So it's not necessarily that Shaitan is just coming at you cold with nothing. He's using the tools that he already has available in your own in your own mentality. I'm in the Shaitan.

You know? The the reflective self, the the the self critical, self analytical, the the. This is this is sort of what Shaitan doesn't want from us to be to be examine ourselves and examine why we make the decisions that we make and why we make the choices that we make and why we think and feel and believe the way we do. We're not supposed Shaytan doesn't want us to question that or think about it critically. So, I mean, even this ayah is is useful in terms of why this is even important for us as Muslims.

You know?