critique of critical thinking via the news

I had to wonder why a mine collapse was the lead story everywhere. It always works out that way whenever a mine collapses. This one seems a bit different because it sounds like something approaching corporate negligence. That's generally bad, but it gets rather worse when someone is working in such a way that they are consistently in danger and associating themselves with various potentially mortal health risks on any given day. We'll have to see how this plays out.

Bridges being defective isn't exactly news either. I read that it is much easier to acquire funds to build new bridges than it is to repair old ones, even ones we know to be defective in some manner. Hmm. That poses some interesting questions. For example, why are we building all these things that we know require maintanence and then barely (never) conduct any on them. That seems rather strange. Until one looks at the general trends of American culture and consumerism. Ahh, now the light of reason sheds more clearly. We aren't concerned about conducting maintanence on all these bridges and such because that's the next generation's problem. Certainly no business of ours because when the bridge reaches a critical level, we'll be dead or moved on anyway. Our entire culture system seems based on the present existence only, without one ounce of consideration toward the future. This would be fine if we had a perfect world where our unceasing interactions always created decent or desirable outcomes. But last time I checked, threesomes still have undesirable psychological effects, not to mention possible diseases (not that I do this sort of checking often). Probably not a perfect world. Maybe we ought to start learning how to think or at least react more effectively to the world around us instead of staring at the TV screen as it bombards us with superficial messages.

In my various readings, it has occurred to me that the rational of 'look before you leap' is a bit too complex for the average person. Engaging ourselves in a rational cost-benefit analysis is too tedious to proceed along every single decision. In fact, most of our decisions are made without this process, in a quick and unconscious manner. So wouldn't it be a good idea to train people how to become somewhat aware of these unconscious leanings and understand why they do some of the things they do. Perhaps those things that seem without thought or care for example. Maybe then we'd stop building useless bridges to nowhere (everywhere, not just in Alaska) and start making some sense of our lack of interest in politics.