During my participation in a dialogue session entitled "Intellectual Awareness and Human Empowerment: The Foundation of Social Stability," organised by Mohamed bin Zayed University for Humanities at the UAE pavilion at the 2026 Beijing International Book Fair, the question that imposed itself was: how do we build an aware human being in an age when information flows unceasingly, opinions jostle for space, and truth becomes entangled with impression?
In truth, we live in a time when information and ideas flow with speed and density, when truth mingles with opinion, knowledge with impression, and arguments with slogans, to the point where the crisis has become the recipient's inability to evaluate them and distinguish the correct from the false. In this reality, logic becomes a necessity — it is the scale of reason and a tool for understanding the world.
Here, the importance of logic as an intellectual discipline emerges as a rational, educational, and civilisational necessity for protecting awareness and building the human being. It is the science that establishes the rules of correct thinking and teaches a person how to distinguish between proof and illusion, between sound reasoning and hasty conclusion. Logic is bound to reason and to life; it is a scale that regulates an idea before it becomes a position, and an opinion before it becomes a conviction, and it prevents a person from falling into reactivity, imitation, or overgeneralisation.
From these premises, the necessity of teaching logic becomes clear, so that it may restore credibility to organised thought. Education should not be content merely with furnishing students with information, but must grant them the capacity to think, question, analyse, compare, and critique. Knowledge has no value if its holder lacks the ability to understand it, and wide reading is of no benefit without an awareness that distinguishes the sound idea from the misleading claim. A student who learns logic learns how to think, how to build an opinion, how to review their own assumptions, and how to respect evidence.
What the "Intellectual Awareness and Human Empowerment" session concluded was that empowerment is not achieved by making knowledge available alone, but by qualifying the person to use it consciously and wisely. Awareness does not mean an abundance of knowledge, but rather how one understands and how one judges. An intellectually empowered person is one who has the ability to distinguish between an argument and a slogan, and between proof and impression.
In the age of social media, the importance of logic grows even greater. Digital platforms do not transmit knowledge alone; they also transmit rumours, fallacies, emotional influence, and directed rhetoric. Many people fall prey to misinformation not because of an absence of information, but because of the weakness of their tools for comprehension, evaluation, and analysis.
Here, logic becomes part of intellectual protection and immunity, because it grants a person the ability to pause before believing, to question before adopting, to distinguish between facts and rumours, and to think before judging and taking a position.
I agree with those who hold that teaching logic helps expose the fallacies that besiege reason in public debates — such as hasty generalisation, appeals to emotion, attacking the person instead of engaging with the idea, and building conclusions on false premises. The danger, however, lies in these fallacies and squabbles becoming social, political, and cultural positions that affect the awareness of individuals and the stability of societies.
Hence the importance of building the aware human being by training them in systematic thinking. Logic can therefore be regarded as an entry point to building the aware human being who is capable of dialogue, respecting difference, presenting an argument, and reviewing oneself, because it teaches a person that the strength of a position is not measured by the sharpness or loudness of a voice, nor by mob rhetoric or sophistical argument, but by the soundness of the proof and the strength of the case.
It stands to reason that a society in which logical thinking is widespread will have the capacity to resist rumours, will be less susceptible to being swept along by emotional, extremist, and populist rhetoric, and will be more prepared to manage difference through dialogue. The logical mind does not negate emotion, but it prevents emotion from leading it; it does not negate values, but it makes the defence of those values more balanced.
In my view, reintroducing the teaching of logic in schools and universities is no longer an intellectual luxury but an educational and civilisational necessity. It should be taught in an applied manner — not as a set of rigid terminology — and must be linked to daily life, news analysis, reading of media discourse, understanding intellectual debates, and evaluating arguments in matters of public concern.
In truth, logic trains the mind in integrity, frees the person from intellectual chaos, and grants them the ability to think clearly, judge fairly, and engage in dialogue with refinement. If intellectual awareness is the foundation of social stability, then logic is one of the most important gateways to that awareness, because it grants a person a scale that protects them from misinformation, guides them towards understanding, and makes them more capable of conscious participation in building their society and their nation.