To cultivate genuine critical thinking, one must first confront an uncomfortable but essential truth:

From the moment we are born, we are not taught how to think — we are taught what to think.

From childhood onward, we are immersed in a web of inherited ideas — shaped by parents, teachers, media, games, institutions, and cultural norms. We are not blank slates, but rather vessels gradually filled with beliefs we did not choose and assumptions we rarely question. The philosopher Michel Foucault might call this our epistemic conditioning: the invisible framework of thought shaped by power, culture, and history.