I Don’t Want You to Believe Me

Encouraging Critical Thought and the Impulse to Question

Photo by Ishaq Robin on Unsplash

We click, we scroll, we nod when the first page of search results and the headlines in our social media timelines spit out conclusions that fit neatly into our preconceived worldview.

But what if I told you that I don’t want you to believe me? I don’t want you to believe anyone, ever. I want you to think more, question and doubt everything and always search for the truth.

The Dangers of Passive Acceptance

Belief in something is a powerful force. It can influence what we buy, what we choose and even who we are. We can — and do — get ourselves into a lot of trouble if we simply accept what we are told as the gospel truth.

In an age of “this-may-be-true” news and fake news, selfishness and echo chambers, it’s relatively easy to be misled. But every time we passively accept information, we give up our own critical faculties. More dangerous, it becomes habit forming.

When we think about how often we read a headline that tells us something we want to hear and then how often we pass on that very headline without reading the article ourselves, checking the sources or doing anything to give us the confidence we need to share something publicly — it’s enough…