Open to Think by Dan Pontefract

Author:Dan Pontefract
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781773270289
Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing
Published: 2018-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

If you had trusted the words of President John F. Kennedy and other American politicians, like former Vice President Al Gore and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, you would have been led to believe that this symbol represents the word “crisis” in Mandarin. These three politicians defined this ideogram to mean both a danger and opportunity. Gore even used it in his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

As with the Frost poem with which we started this book, here we are confronted with another example of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. The ideogram does not mean danger and opportunity. Three different high-ranking politicians from three different U.S. administrations have used an incorrect translation and millions are now fooled by it. Like all words in Mandarin, characters and syllables matter. The word for crisis in Mandarin (wēijī) consists of two syllables that contain two separate written characters, wēi (危) and jī (機/机), as identified in the graphic above.

Unless you had done your homework and questioned the validity of the aforementioned politicians’ statements, you would never have known that the wēi syllable of wēijī does in fact convey the notion of danger. However, the second component to the word, jī, refers more to a critical point when something begins to change. The Mandarin word and symbol for wēijī thus depicts a risky and potentially dangerous situation where one should be especially wary. It does not reflect both danger and opportunity.

Critical Thinking requires you to continually ask questions such as:

Is this claim true?

Can a second or even a third source back up the point?

Where is the research or citations to prove the information truthful?

What other data or facts are required to make an informed decision?

Was this too easy to prove? Did I gloss over the information?

How quickly did I make my final decision?

Who else might I collaborate with on the facts? Can I trust them?

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