EDITORIAL: Dare to think of a better 2024

‘The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. A second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. A first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.’ — A.A. Milne

Most people are endowed with good brains, with the ability not just to think, but to think critically.

Yet with those star-seeking brains come all sorts of mortal assets and deficits. At the higher end, emotion — enthusiasm, exhilaration, perhaps even serenity — guides us toward health and happiness. 

But toward the lower end? Where anxiety, fear and despair reside? That’s where these beautiful brains disconnect, where rational and productive thought surrenders to irrational emotions that fuel journeys down a path toward despair and destruction.

Even good brains are supremely challenged these days, navigating the maze of misinformation and disinformation that grows more daunting by the nanosecond. For all the good the internet and artificial intelligence provide now and the potential for broad future benefit they offer, the proliferation of malignance spewed by poison peddlers, eagerly consumed by information seekers, threatens not only our way of life, but life itself.

And yet, if people are determined to think critically, to better select the information they’re consuming from the fire hose of modern society, that healthy, happy future remains within our collective grasp.

The Press welcomes 2024 with the firm belief that tomorrow can dawn brighter than it did today; that the world’s weakened mental muscles of critical thinking have not atrophied irreparably; and that better decision-making at every level is not only possible in the coming year, but guaranteed if enough people abandon their engines of destructive emotions and embrace those that enlighten and constructively engage.