Critical thinking?
     Or "the laws of life"?

What do young people, facing what they face, most need to learn?

Quickly, someone will answer, “critical thinking!”

If “critical thinking” means paying attention to evidence and reason, I’m all for it.

But if it means, as it so often does, a haughty sense of superiority to received wisdom, well, then I think it’s something of a superstition, part of the unquestioned folklore of a frustrated tribe of intellectuals who wish they were taken more seriously than they are. For them, the world would be a better place if it ran more like a graduate seminar, where those with a gift for verbal performances were the stars. But life is not like that.

Life is full of character tests where we must not just speak but act, and in situations where we can never have all the data. Often, simple goodness and obedience to principles ends up being far more efficacious than the ability to split hairs and see through arguments. One who sees through everything may end by seeing nothing.

As the man said, being intelligent is like having four-wheel-drive. It just means you get stuck in more remote places.

To live intelligently, the best tools are often traditional bits of wisdom encoded in time-tested proverbs and folk sayings, like these (most adapted from John Templeton’s Laws of Life):

The law of the harvest: you reap what you sow. Also expressed as “What goes around comes around” and “As ye judge ye shall be judged.”

It is better to love than to be loved.
Success is a journey, not a destination.
Enthusiasm is contagious (and nothing important is achieved without enthusiasm).
The borrower is a servant to the lender.
We find what we look for (good or evil).
Every ending is a beginning.
The way to fix bad things is to create good things.
Love is stronger than everything else.
You can’t solve a problem at the same level as the problem. You need to get above it.
The truth will make you free.
To find gold you need to search where the gold is.
Habit is the best servant, the worst master.
People are punished by their sins not for them.
Make yourself necessary and the world will feed you.
Luck favors the prepared.
Defeat isn’t bitter if you don’t swallow it.