Listen to David Icke and Russell Brand here.

I think one of the great downsides to generation gaps, real or perceived,  is that they can lead to indiscriminate scepticism.  The broad scepticism towards politics and ‘the system’ during the 1960s and 1970s gave rise to many good things. It also gave rise to much irrationalism and muddy thinking.  I believe a similar situation exists today.  There is a generation gap forming under the nose of a political and media establishment that is still firmly rooted in the 20th Century.  Among many young people there is a broad scepticism towards government, politics, and the media.  Much of this is positive.  Many young people seem willing and able to Google and get information from multiple sources.  And savagely mock the absurd.

Scepticism without critical thinking can be dangerous.   Because in those circumstances a rejection of the mainstream can lead to unqualified acceptance of  any ideas regardless of their logical consistency or evidence.  Conspiracy theories - for instance.   People accept them because they do not have critical thinking skills. They don’t have critical thinking skills because our society does not encourage critical thinking outside of fields where it is required.   They’re not stupid people.  There is a paradoxical situation in which people can be deeply sceptical and lack the critical thinking skills to distinguish the things they should be sceptical about.  It’s a real shame.  People that believe in conspiracy theories are seeking answers, which is something that should be applauded, but unfortunately they’re barking up the wrong tree.

An example of this is the rise of David Icke.  He is more popular than ever. I quite like David Icke.  Really.  I don’t think he’s a bad person, but I think his theories are wrong.   Even a cursory examination of what constitutes evidence for many of his theories, parsing his arguments, leads to rejection of them on the grounds of consistency and lack of evidence.  But there exists a situation today whereby those with undeveloped ideas of what constitutes evidence, and lacking critical thinking skills, are led to David Icke and his kind.   Many young people with legitimate scepticism of government post-Iraq/post-Blair/post-Bush  are ambling into the hands of 9/11 conspiracy theories, people like David Icke.  Much in the same way many hippies were led down blind alleys by religion, drug culture, and ill thought out ideologies.

In an ideal world books like Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World and Darrell Huff’s How to Lie With Statistics would be mandatory secondary school reading material.  If I had the free cash I would by a few thousand copies of each and  give them away.   A basic understanding of statistics and basic critical thinking skills are essential for understanding the modern world and essential for positive changes.  Otherwise people act with scant regard to evidence which, as has been proven time and time again, leads to very bad things indeed.  In an ideal world the revolution would be everyone being able to think critically.  Scepticism minus critical thinking equals wasted energy.