There are many ways people have tried to define what critical thinking is.

Critical thinking means making reasoned judgments that are logical and well-thought out. It is a way of thinking in which you don’t simply accept all arguments and conclusions you are exposed to but rather have an attitude involving questioning such arguments and conclusions. It requires wanting to see what evidence is involved to support a particular argument or conclusion. People who use critical thinking are the ones who say things such as, ‘How do you know that? Is this conclusion based on evidence or gut feelings?’ and ‘Are there alternative possibilities when given new pieces of information?’
Additionally, critical thinking can be divided into the following three core skills:

1. Curiosity is the desire to learn more information and seek evidence as well as being open to new ideas.
2. Skepticism involves having a healthy questioning attitude about new information that you are exposed to and not blindly believing everything everyone tells you.
3. Finally, humility is the ability to admit that your opinions and ideas are wrong when faced with new convincing evidence that states otherwise.

study.com

Critical thinking is the process of carefully and systematically analyzing problems to find ways to solve them. It involves identifying several possible solutions and then logically evaluating each one, comparing them to one another on their merits, and then selecting the one that you conclude is the most promising.
http://www.thebalancecareers.com by
DAWN ROSENBERG MCKAY

Critical Thinking, the process of thinking carefully about a subject or idea, without allowing feelings or opinions to affect you
dictionary.cambridge.org

I could go on with hundreds of ways to define critical thinking, but I won’t. I believe the simpler less complex descriptions and definitions are usually superior. The definition I like the most is from dictionary.com.

Critical Thinking
disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence
dictionary.com

Watching the events over the past few of weeks tells me that much of our society has lost the skill of critical thinking. Man, human beings, are designed with three important qualities; the ability to make choices, the ability to act and interact with our surroundings, and the ability to feel with emotions. I think of this three part nature of man as, Choice, Action, and Feeling.

Choice and feeling are unseen qualities. It is these two aspects of our nature that determines the actions we take. How these three natures interact determines in large part who we are and how others see us.

As people, we’ve determined that education is important to both the individual and society as a whole. We learn language, history, math, scientific discoveries and various philosophies. All this learning, and more, is designed to help us make choices that benefit each of use.

We train our bodies with exercises, sports, motor skills and more to allow us to do the things that need doing. In other words to perform actions.

We also train our emotions. Socializing, charity, liking, lusting, anger, and joy all involve our feelings. Growing up, we learn how to rationally manage our feelings.

We need all three natures of ourselves to be a whole person. We also need to keep them in balance. Choices made without feelings or the ability to put them into action won’t amount to positive results.

Critical thinking helps join all three aspects of ourselves to help make whatever we do successful. If we make choices for our actions without considering feelings, we act in a cold and calculating manner. If we acted on feelings alone without being guided by well thought out choices, we do dangerous things, to us and others. By nature we can act without thought or emotions; when we touch a hot iron, we act automatically to pull away. We train ourselves to do things without having to think or use emotions. We teach ourselves physical skills like walking or riding a bike.

When we act on our emotions or make choices that are not well thought out, we often do regrettable things. Both the cause of the current rioting and the rioting itself are the results of the lack of critical thinking. Yes, there is historical and ongoing actions that need changing and there are influencers and groups of people that are inciting violence and destruction of property for their own unrelated agendas.

If we all learned and practiced critical thinking, much could be accomplished for the good of all.