The Art And Crime Of Thinking For Yourself
“Think for yourself” might be one of our most misunderstood expressions, especially in this age of conformist binarism. We’re encouraged to do it, but usually as a ploy to sway us from one dogmatic structure into another. Such encouragement is rarely about promoting genuine creativity or breaking cultural norms; it’s just a polite way to proselytize a different bias. It is strange, then, that so few of us realize the opposite of groupthink is not thinking for yourself. It is simply another variety—another brand™—of groupthink.
Our culture is organized to ensure we do as little thinking for ourselves as possible. Before we even enter the bureaucratic centers of indoctrination, most parents’ mission is to grow miniature versions of themselves. They hand down their beliefs, heuristics, and traumas—not to mention their religion and politics. This is done to lighten a child’s burden, of course, but also to manipulate an unaware creature into being more tolerable. For the free mind, almost all hope is lost upon entering the education system. Can you name a better example of misinformation than calling our schools centers of “learning?” They are centers of culling, medicating, and indoctrinating. “Learning” in these institutions means memorizing and repeating what you are told. The system has forgotten that teaching is the highest form of learning. And while the teachers of Western civilization are under-appreciated and poorly compensated, they too rarely encourage students to think for themselves.
We don’t like being around people who think differently than we do—politically, socially, or otherwise. We will go to great lengths to preserve our worldview or impress upon others what we’ve determined is “the true way of life.”
The very presence of a different thought, especially one held as truth by another, can trigger a cascade of self-reassessment. Our internal landscape, our perceived reality, appreciates these audits about as much as our bodies appreciate large fluctuations in temperature. That uncomfortable feeling of an environment that isn’t “climate controlled” is similar to what happens internally when we’re first exposed to counter-orthodoxy. This human characteristic is a frustratingly subconscious series of hard-held ideas that behave like a thermostat, protecting us from the annoyance of anything “different.” We react unconsciously, slapping at ideas inconsistent with our comfortable beliefs as impulsively as we’d slap a curious fly buzzing near our ear.
SLAP.
Let’s be clear: in and of themselves, most ideas are not good. But even bad ideas funnel the human experiment toward practices that sustain life. By narrowing down what is and is not true, they promote a progressive terrestrial experience. This is the scientific method, and it is impossible without the exploration of bad ideas. The modern (or postmodern) interpretation might be the worst idea of all: denying that truth exists and staking humanity's survival on the subjective nature of the individual.
If nature only had one idea, it wouldn’t have evolved beyond a single hydrogen molecule. If nature preferred the subjective truth of individual experience over that of the collective, none of us would exist. If we think we are outside nature and its laws of diversification, we won’t be around for long, at least not in this form. Nature explores different ideas through mutation. Humanity is the result of countless bad ideas.
Most mutations, like most ideas, have poor outcomes. Statistically, 99% of mutations are terrible, and our ideas are perhaps wrong with equal frequency. This high error rate may be why so many of us seek historical wisdom or the solace of time-proven ideas, wanting to “just go back to how things were.” Simultaneously, we feel pressured to hand our collective wellbeing to progressive tech giants and billionaire do-gooders, to “leave it to the experts” and “trust the data,” as if the rich or computer-savvy are somehow above the laws of nature. The shift in polarity from conservation to progression will have an equally poor outcome because—again—most ideas are bad. It doesn’t matter if you are a liberal progressive or a conservative Christian; most of what you think is wrong.
This push to the edge of either spectrum happens because people believe, without proof, that they are above the odds. Their rationale is the same. It’s either the "Good Ol’ Days" or "TechTopia," and you believe you are thinking differently because you shake your head at the opposite idea. You either ask, “How can these genderqueer liberals love like this?” or wonder, “How did these redneck inbreds survive the pandemic and the insurrection?” Though many so-called “free thinkers” declare their desire for liberty, they mostly want to be unencumbered by those whose ideas differ. They believe their "freedom" depends on suppressing the “bad ideas” of the “other.” Everyone wants to talk about freedom, but most of us imprison ourselves by trying to prevent others from living with bad ideas. Both poles, the 0s and the 1s, are just marketed ideas, commodified lifestyles, each arrogantly believing it can outsmart nature.
When humanity is "liberated" from nature, it becomes dependent on commandments, commodities, and convenience. Nature demands that you think for yourself; commerce merely demands that you consume.
Cultural progression and technology promise relief from the devastation of nature—from disease, offensive ideas, and violence. They do so through the worship of their own good ideas, like democracy and capitalism… oops, socialism. But regardless of the political slant, it is an expression of fear to seek control over others, to insulate against death, or to replace reality with its supposedly improved, for-sale, virtual equivalent. The technopoly that has aggregated food, medicine, and convenience convinces its subjects that utopia is just around the corner, available to all who buy into its marketplace. We are all being taken for a ride, sold the idea that commerce and comfort are commandments. But there can only be hell where nature is not found. For as evil as nature might seem—with its grief and sorrow, its theft of the young and torture of the old—it is the one place that is equal. Equal in its beauty and its horror, and above all, equal in its bad ideas, of which we are one of the worst.
To thrive, we need as many different ideas as possible, including those of idiot billionaires flying to space, doomsayers squirreling away dehydrated food, and prophets claiming to know what is good, better, and best. We should applaud the 99% for setting examples of how not to do it. We must be free to try whatever we feel is a worthwhile life, even if it ends badly.
To think differently is to live with nature; it is to practice variation—Mother Nature’s masterful tool. Few people think differently enough to develop their own ideas, and fewer still learn a different way to live from them. In fact, most people don’t grasp ideas; ideas strangle them. This is true of saints and denialists, preachers and politicians. If you have a narrative, a group, an agenda, or a mission statement, you have likely given up thinking for yourself.
Thinking for yourself is not about arriving at a correct answer. It is the messy, uncomfortable, and necessary process of engaging with the world as it is: a chaotic laboratory of mostly failing experiments. It is the acceptance that we, and our ideas, are part of that process. The alternative is to let a marketed ideology think for you. And that is the worst idea of all.
