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Sustainable Living Audio Book – Learn From Looking – Chapter 3: Part 1
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The author of Learn from Looking, Charlie Szoradi, has given us authorization to share the written content and drawings from his book with our readers. This is one of many segments that focuses on the overall theme of sustainable design and overall sustainable living.
Book Topic: Sustainable Living
Learn from Looking is about critical thinking and reaching a sustainable future more cost-effectively than ever imagined. The book's subtitle "How Observation Inspires Innovation" speaks to the core aspect of the content, given that the author, Charlie Szoradi, is an architect and inventor who has traveled extensively around the world over multiple decades and built businesses that range from energy saving lighting to indoor agriculture systems. Mr. Szoradi shares insights on "green" clean-technology that are increasingly key for sustainability, profitable businesses, healthy living, and raising intellectually curious children in a pre and post Covid-19 world. We give Learn from Looking five out of five green stars! Note that the audio book comes with the E-book for only $15 together. Click here to Order the Audio Book on Sustainable Living
Sample content from Learn from Looking:
Definition of Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.
Overall, I like the definition and the idea of thinking how knowledge makes sense in a world that has plenty of knowledge but often less time to pause and think. We put a man on the moon without smartphones and text messages, so I sometimes feel like we are working harder but not smarter. The words from the critical thinking definition that appeal to me most are “observation” and “action.”
Too often we think that we know something, and then we don’t necessarily act in the best interests for ourselves or for our larger economy or community. This was true for several decades when it came to lighting in our homes and offices. Certainly our founding fathers looked around, and their observations led them to take action. The twenty-first-century energy revolution now follows the late twentieth-century information technology revolution, the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, and the eighteenth-century democracy revolution. Hopefully, this book inspires you to pause, observe, think critically, and then ask key questions that lead to constructive actions in multiple areas of your life.
Diverse Geographic Perspective
Perspective provides power. From East Africa to Eastern Europe and from Asia to Central America, I have had the great fortune of conducting research and traveling in countries around the world. Greater Philadelphia is the home that I have loved for the past two decades and expect to continue loving for many more, regardless of the success or failure of our sports teams.
Philadelphia is also naturally the home of American independence and the birthplace of our Declaration, which may serve as the ultimate example of critical thinking. Our founding fathers embodied the spirit of innovation and courage to challenge preconceptions and ignite the fire of democracy. Now, American energy independence is within reach, and we have an opportunity to think critically about how to seize the moment.
In my research on different continents, I have studied how people live with and without energy. I also drove across the United States between college and graduate school and experienced the power of the heartland at an impressionable age. Self-reliance is such a fundamental part of the American frontier spirit, and I always enjoy returning to Idaho, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. Before settling in Greater Philadelphia, I lived in American cities ranging from the political machine of Washington, DC, to the finance machine of New York. By contrast to city living, along my travels, I have tracked silver back gorillas in East Africa, climbed Mount Fuji, and seen firsthand the failures of communism from inside the Soviet Iron Curtain, before the wall came down. The global multicultural and diverse socioeconomic experiences have provided me with some fresh perspective on power consumption and sustainable design in cities, towns, suburbs, farms, and the wilderness.
Over the past few years of my career, I have spent over ten thousand hours, met with over one thousand companies, and personally trained over five hundred people to look up and make a case to switch the lights to LEDs for energy savings and overall sustainable design. Light-emitting diode (LED) technology is still disruptive relative to traditional incumbent lighting, so we have had to think critically to engineer cost-effective products and also think critically to communicate cost-effective solutions over commodity purchases.
Definition Conclusion: The definition of critical thinking centers around analyzing and synthesizing information gathered from absorbing outside information. In short, critical thinking is about opening your senses without bias to make connections that others may not have made. Travel and personal and work experiences become spokes in a critical thinking wheel that continues to grow larger and turn more smoothly. As the spokes increase, they start to overlap and inform each other. The following examples are at the intersection of critical thinking for sustainable design.
