Father

A Practice Activity in Critical Reflective Thought:

Statement: “A savage finds his way skillfully through a wilderness by reading certain obscure indications; the civilized build a highway which shows the road to all” (Dewey 5).

Critical Reflection: Who is really the ‘savage’? Could it actually be he who bends nature to fit his own needs- he who does not reflect carefully enough to “cultivate deep- seated and effective habits of discriminating tested [the] beliefs” that call for the permanent altercation of nature? (Dewey 8).

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The second man I ever deemed to be my father was Christopher Columbus. I was in second grade, and I remember him being called father, and so I called him father as well- the first time I used this sacred term to describe someone other than my loving dad back home.

In the story I heard, Columbus was the father of America, an America powerless to be known previous to his decided ‘discovery’ of her. His fatherhood was bolstered by many facts, one fact seemed more important than others: he was the first man in America who looked like me. All other persons in America were categorized as ‘savage’.

Throughout the majority of my time in the academic world which shaped my ability to think, I lived under the unknown fatherhood of violence, genocide, colonial theft and the drive to alter nature to fit imperial needs. For me, Columbus was always just ‘dad’. It took me a very long time to develop the critical reflective capacity necessary to de-father Columbus and to reject classifications of who embodies ‘savagery’. I had be conditioned to think, but under “social conditions [which tended] to instigate and confirm wrong habits of thinking by authority, by conscious instruction, and by the even more insidious half-conscious influences of language, imitation, sympathy, and suggestion” (Dewey 8).

Thus, the ability to reflectively think is not only the way in which we become better writers or communicators, it also is an act of promoting social change and social responsibility. As I gained the information and capacity to reject Columbus as my father-figure, I also expanded my thinking from “unconscious competence, the application of a process or the retrieval of information that doesn’t require conscious attention”, to a transformative act (Anson 7). Reflective thinking is primarily transformative- turning fleetingness into something sustained. It is a different way of living and participating in the social community; one cannot be passive if one reflects to invoke a “willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest and disturbance… [reserving that] judgment [should be] suspended during further inquiry; and [that] suspense is likely to be somewhat painful” (Dewey 4).

Therefore, the process of reflective thought is a way to live with discomfort and imperfection. This is necessary not only for academic growth, but also for our society’s pursuit to be better people and end horrors around us. To act for change, we must first take the time to reject dangerous truths we may have absorbed when were thinking without reflection. This rejection takes time and an intense commitment to self-critical listening. Above all, reflective thought is necessarily a vulnerable process- a process in which you pause in a moment of infinity to understand first before fidgeting to defend, justify or blindly pursue your context.