Benefits of Critical and Creative Thinking to Informed Citizenry - Essay Example

Consequently, a socially aware individual member becomes informed accordingly and this is a stage that marks one’s passage to the habit of thought, pondering about an optimum approach or response to the stimuli presented by a set of challenges.

Being informed, however, is an independent task that may or may not require thinking. While citizenry pertains to being part of a nation or state by birth or naturalization, the loyalty expected from each citizen in return comes with several concerns of which one must be informed in a way or another. But because each person has his unique preference, gathering information necessarily depends on this or on how one chooses to obtain details beginning with the choice on whether or not the information is acceptable. The nature of information is essential in this regard, and typically, people would consider taking a course of action only if they find it interesting. Thus, how informative the source is can also be perceived to form a challenge to be acted upon.

Once an individual in the society decides to gain knowledge out of being informed, correspondingly, he treats it with evaluation or other related options which would determine for him if it is worth any further investment of time, energy, and thought. This is where the flexibility between thinking creatively and thinking critically may apply. When critical thinking is found to be more conducive according to the current set of perceptions and educational foundation of the thinker, he becomes that type who systematically guides his decision-making. To arrive at a decision or resolution, he engages in-depth with a broad analysis of the given case, carefully identifying the problem and assessing certain alternatives that would fit in resolve for the premise.

Approaching society’s challenge critically may be tedious or painstaking because it also involves interacting with a variety of people especially if the critical thinker comes to be part of a group. In this group, members share different viewpoints and criticisms and the advantage of learning from inputs in huge quantity takes place. On his own, a critical person can direct the path to results as he prefers but within a group, he ought to take into account reactions and claims proposed by other members. Critical thinking could be laborious in such aspects particularly when it comes to more than sufficient alternatives and complex ideas available one must examine and with which to compare his own. Patience and the ability to assert oneself thus become indispensable traits in managing a response to challenge by way of critical intellect.

On the other hand, creative thinking can offer the informed citizenry an equal or even higher leverage out of exploring diverse possibilities of arriving at the desired end. An innovative individual normally accepts the challenge and acknowledges revolutionizing with strategies as he deals with solving the recognized conflict. In this fashion, creativity lightens up an attitude and stimulates a person to think with a growing sense of interest, knowing that he has adopted for himself a setting in which he feels secure enough to employ open-mindedness to entertain a range of probabilities. By thinking creatively, one is not necessarily confined to following critical steps in a single order or through a standard set of procedures.