Life Experience Shapes One’s Critical Thinking

I bet everybody thought at least once in his or her lifetime what would happen if he or she had taken another course, made another choice. After five years I am in America, many times – not only once! – I asked myself what would be if I did not leave Italy.

People like to think of their future more than they like to think of their past. Inasmuch as the future they can still shape their lives, make a different turn, but the past, as the word suggests, is passed. Is it utterly true? Humans live in their present as if it is the result of their past. Is it not? “Experience” intended as “length of participation” –partaking in life, in this case – suggests a sense of past, of something that is not anymore. Once again, the language helps understanding a nuance of a truth humans strive to comprehend: why humans are who/what they are? Because of that life experience, because of their past thus, they shape their critical thinking, how they are related to the world, what they are and what they will be.

It is because of that experience that one may have a read of a text and another person may have a different read. It is because of that experience that philosopher cannot give any “truth” at all, but may only teach an illusionary way to reach it. What is handsome for one is not the same for another. What one knows about reality is the addition of a rather collective experience. One’s singular experience is a little section of the whole.

People’s brains and behaviors are shaped by those same people’s life experience.

The life-experience package includes one’s culture and origin. To give an example, the value an American may give to the symbol of the American flag is different from the importance another may give – either in respect of the American culture or in respect of the one’s own culture – to the same object. Culture shapes life experience that shape one’s critical thinking. It is a chain, the chain of understanding and being that binds humankind together and, at the same time, creates their diversity.