Greentext

Again, it is well within your prerogative to not accept such behaviour! I honestly view it as yet another traumatic maladaptation and treat it as such - even though it's causally not their fault that they believe/behave thusly, it is their responsibility to keep it in check.

But I'll be straight with you, I think you may be underestimating yourself and overestimating the average person. Critical Thinking really isn't innate, it's a skill. A skill which a lot (I'd even go as far as to say a large majority) of people thoroughly lack, because it is a skill which needs training from very early on, as it builds upon itself. I don't think there's a general educational schema on Earth at the moment which in any way truly encourages Critical Thinking, if there ever has been one. From what I've seen, it tends to come into play way later and in very specific fields of study, which means there's a lot of catching up to do by that point, so the horizon it affects tends to remain narrow.

Not to mention the utterly insidious and imperceptible nature of ideological corruption. It's incredibly hard to see the brainwashing if one's been going through it since before one started forming coherent throughts. It permeates even the subconscious.

I'm not trying to play the perfect being over here, I've seen myself being as dumb as a rock at times and I know that I have a llllot of learning left in front of me. But realistically speaking, just because we're dumb doesn't mean others aren't even dumber...