Critical Thinking Skills:  Use It or Lose It

M Bakri Musa

April 19, 2026

Excerpt from my Qur’an, Hadith, And Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking.

T

hinking is a mental process. As with any biological process, two truisms apply. One, the inevitable effect of aging; two, the maxim of “use it or lose-it.”

            There is the normal physiological process of ageing versus the various degenerative afflictions of the brain (stroke and diseases like Alzheimer). Included with the former are such benign embarrassing “senior moments.” With the ubiquity of Google, there is even less need to remember such details as phone numbers.

            This differentiation between expected physiologic changes with ageing versus pathologic process is not always clear. Nonetheless there are certain biological realities. One, we do not produce any new nerve cells after birth. Two, the inevitable reduction in the production of neurotransmitters, hormones, and other vital chemicals in our body that accompanies aging. Some could be mitigated with medications.

            There is increasing recognition of the important role of remote (outside the brain) inflammations, especially chronic systemic ones like rheumatoid upon our mental processes. With inflammation, acute or chronic, our body produces a number of chemical mediators. Those also affect neuronal functions.

            When the blood of a young mouse is given to an old one, its learning skills revert to that shown by the young one. Meaning, the old mouse becomes ‘smarter.’ The reverse is also true. Giving young mice the blood of old ones would slow the young animals’ learning capacity.

            Entrepreneurial physicians soon exploited these findings to give plasma (blood minus the red cells) of young donors to rejuvenate old men, until the United States Federal Drug Administration banned the practice.

            This belief that getting the blood of the young would confer magical youthful powers, the Fountain of Youth elixir as it were, has a long history. Pope Innocent VIII (d. 1492) imbibed the blood of young boys to stave off the inevitable. What youthful qualities the pontiff was trying to preserve escapes me!

            While the practice of dispensing ‘youthful’ plasma may have ceased, the research goes on, focussing both on what is in the youthful blood as well as what’s not in it.

            The ‘what’s not in it’ are the inflammatory chemical mediators produced with chronic inflammation, symptomatic or otherwise. They have profound negative effects on brain cells and neuronal circuits, and thus on all mental processes including and especially learning and thinking. The ‘what’s in it’ are the all-important totipotential stem cells present in young blood. Totipotential means they could turn into any type of cell. 

This new field of regenerative medicine is fast expanding. In my current narrow field of practice (treating chronic wounds), I use stem cells derived from human amniotic membranes, skin cultures from young donors, and from one’s own fat cells.

These exciting developments notwithstanding, certain verities remain. Good diet, regular exercises, sleeping well, maintaining social as well as family bonds, and keeping mentally as well as intellectually active could delay if not prevent these degenerative changes in our brain as well as body. In the Finnish FINGER Trial in which the subjects were those with a higher-than-normal probability of developing dementia, they could delay the onset of symptoms in the intervention group versus the control group.

            Critical thinking, like all mental processes, would atrophy from lack of use. Then you would be in the same state as those who had never been taught how to think critically. They become comfortable with having others think for them. That is the norm with feudal and totalitarian societies where citizens willingly accept everything told to them or what they were asked to do.

            Contemporary Malay society is still very feudal, the facade of modernity notwithstanding. We blindly follow the dictates of the royals and ulama class.

            Critical thinking does not mean you are absolved from making choices, rather that the choices you make would be rational, and to be hoped for, wise and fruitful. Critical thinking does not mean or require endlessly analyzing things to the umpteenth degree and reducing you to be victims of “paralysis by analysis.” Nor does it mean that you are “critical” as with being cynical or dismissive.

The exercises in and examples of critical thinking here are taken from the Qur’an, hadith, our folklores, and current local commentaries, all materials familiar to Malaysians, more so Malays. Then having sharpened our critical thinking skills, I examine the two current challenges facing Malaysia – one, internal, Malay Special Privileges and two, external, the current brewing storm in the South China Sea.

 

Next:  Qur’anic Texts As Exercises In Critical Thinking