I am an independent thinker. I have often considered myself an independent thinker anarchist type. Much of my thinking about anarchism comes from my own independent thinking. I don’t like the government. I believe society would be much better without it. I do realize that we have a government right now, and, our government should be held accountable, preserve our freedoms, and, act like a Republic is supposed to. I just see so many people on here and so many people on other websites just taking one single philosophy or school of thought and debating that, as, opposed to thinking for themselves. I used to parrot everything I’ve learned from the internet, or, steal everything from books- without doing my own independent thinking on anything what-so-ever. I’ve learned from my mistakes. I feel that it’s completely unproductive to just parrot things from the internet… rather we should be focused on how we can minimize the power of the state right now. The state has too much power. Most people would agree with that. Yet all I see so many people doing is just regurgitating a lot of philosophical buzzwords… not fully understanding the thinking of what they’re saying would mean. I see this everywhere. People need to think for themselves more. If people started doing that I think we could get somewhere.
Or maybe you simply don’t understand the arguements?
I think we often forget the deepest of our own assumptions. I think being totally objective toward science and the world around us is a pleasant myth, we all have our biases and metaphysical doctrines in the way we view the world, and this very much influences how we approach things. I also think certain truths can be very upsetting and we do our utmost to avoid them at times.
I wouldn’t worry about mistakes, you can’t learn without them. I know I’ve made plenty, and continue to do so! Indeed I was socialist leaning until I read a book that convinced me of its utter failure(not by an Austrian). I was also a fairly strong positivist until I came across Human Action and various parts of the Austrian School.
A lot of people here seem to be advocate anarchy, and although i am starting to lean that way, I frankly don’t feel I know enough to justify a position on it. The same goes for natural rights.
Awesome
What would you suggest?
Stop relying on other people for your philosophical framework and come up with your own. I feel that it’s too often that we see someone who writes about something we like, or, agree with, and, before we’ve thought out our own views fully enough- we automatically accept their view. It’s like with the free market and socialism. There are generally agreed upon views about each of these philosophies. If you were to label me I would go in the free market category… however… I have my own thoughts, and, my own views about how I believe a free market should be done. I just feel that we spend too much time going up to authority figures and getting ideas from them… first of all, how do you think they became authority figures in the first place? They spent much of their time thinking about these various subjects, and, reading about history, etc. We don’t have to parrot their philosophical views. We can agree with them and choose to disagree with them on various issues… but… rather than letting other people come to our conclusions for us about how the world should be… we should fully think through our thoughts about philosophical viewpoints, etc, and the like, before we delve into the heavy philosophical stuff. That’s how I see it… I think too many people rely on others for views that confirm to their biases. I think that we need to stop doing that, stop, only relying on authority figures, in history, or philosophy, for basis of our own arguments and come up with our own rational thinking to justify our views and challenge our views. That’s the exact same thing these philosophers did. We don’t need to mimick them, and, be exactly like them, and be walking replicas of them.
Everyone at least pays lip service to the idea of thinking for themselves. In practice, it’s all about the ratio of reading to thinking, of input to processing.
I like to keep a very “rich mix,” where I take in new ideas in small bits and spend a long time working through them, testing their limits, provisionally examining all the implications they would have, searching for logical inconsistencies, poking around for things I know others tend to miss (especially subtle logical and semantics-based errors), etc. It’s much slower in a sense, but I prefer quality over quantity in most cases. I think most people are not like that, but there are advantages to both styles.
Just because people disagree with you does not mean that they are idiots who don’t bother to think for themselves, and many people who do agree with you are the idiots that you lament about - its just a fact of the world.
Is this a critique of people in general? People on this forum? Anarchists?
Its a critique against people who think that they, and those who agree with them are the only independent thinkers, and that if people think inpendently that they’ll then agree with them.
A fine piece of independent thinking. I agree.
Yes. Because anyone who disagrees with me isn’t an indendent thinker.
No, I’m just saying more people should stop parrotting off of political philosophers for everything, and media pundits and the like.
It’s a critique of people of people in general.
Are you in your teens perchance?
No, I just turned 20 years old. Why do you ask?
j/k but, i could point to some threads on this forum which demonstrate that not all independant thinking is worthy.
SilentX, you’re onto something with this “parroting great (and not-so-great) thinkers” problem, and I think I agree with your general sentiment. However, you’ll not make much headway here unless you use fewer words, smaller paragraphs, better organization, and look at your posts from the reader’s position (anticipate objections and misinterpretations) before submitting. It fits the forum style here better.
I do understand that there are people that would misinterpret my post thinking it is about them.
Basically, I just feel that many people tend to look towards the great thinkers. I will say that I have done it too from time to time. I have looked up to authority figures in the past to justify my reasoning and arguments. But, essentially I feel that I kind of cheated, and, that I could come up with the same conclusions they’ve gotten by just looking at facts and thinking for myself. It’s like- basically if you agree with one author on one particular point of view- I would say that you shouldn’t keep going on and reading more books by that author about that particular subject, unless, the book contains facts to back up their opinion, or, if it’s good enough, and the such. You shouldn’t do it just because you agree with the author. I don’t think we should read works by authors we agree with 100%.
AJ, what you said earlier about the thinking-reading ratio, I would tend to agree with. I just feel that people should expand their own thinking. I mean doesn’t it seem stupid if you’re just expousing everything you’ve ever heard from one author or another author without really showing your own points of view on a particular subject? I’m not slamming anyone here. I’m saying- that that’s what I used to do- and I didn’t really know where I stood, because I just absorbed what I thought was cool, not taking into account what I really felt. It’s like I felt I had to agree with them, or, just take in their point of view. I was a sponge. I don’t think that we will get far in general-if- we act like sponges like that. I don’t think I’m alone in having had this happen to me.
I could probably find a lot of threads on a lot of internet forum that show that it independent thinking isn’t necessary in all cases. That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t do it. I find that independent thinking and self-examination often helps me think about the world, and, that way I don’t have to just view problems, in the means of one school of thought, or, another, etc, etc.
I think a lot people on this forums think for themselves. Most of them are pretty “Rothbardians”, “Misesians”, “Hoppeans” or “Blockeans” but almost everyone disagree with them on many issues. I don’t see nothing wrong in reading a lot, and feeding your mind with those ideas. I still have to meet a book which I agree 100%, so don’t understand what you mean by no reading authors you agree completely. The idea of the forums is to talk about this stuff, and if you’ve written something by yourself, post it, most of us will read it and consider it if it’s worth.