Think for yourself
Apologies for leaving this space blank for roughly a week.
This evening I attended a lecture by an animal rights advocate. Largely, he preached to my inner choir on this issue, but he struck a tone on several issues that I found disconcerting. One of those was his demand to “think for yourself” over animal rights. This links to the similar demand to “think different,” which I will also discuss. I’m not really sure what either of these calls means in total, and so I thought about them for a while. Here’s what I thought about.
First, that any thinking that occurs under these terms, by definition, will not actually end up with any radical departure or insight. Essentially, this process cannot be independent because it’s held in relation to ‘traditional thought’ or whatever the thinker presumes to be ‘normal’ about the world. These demands impede thinking freely because of the requirement to separate from or transcend what came before. Also, the distinction of thinking differently means the ideas cannot escape their symbolic roles- you’re always just thinking differently rather than thinking in terms that have immediate political relevance.
Also, “thinking for yourself” atomizes the political significance of thinking in politics. You only think for yourself and your own purposes rather than thinking in terms of the world as other people present it through language and political traditions.
I’m also not sure if “thinking for yourself” is even possible. No thought originates in one persons mind, fully formed, removed from other influences. Every idea relies on what came before, at the very least in a physiological sense: the person who thinks develops over time and in a multiplicity of places, as does their brain. Thought, music, poetry, art, politics depend on history of ideas, and acknowledging your own history in ideas can be a valuable political asset for building links to other people and developing more effective political strategy. For instance: ending distribution of pornography is a goal of both feminist and conservative religious movements. As a feminist, allying yourself with a group that seeks to preserve the moral purity of the female body as sinful could be harmful, because the process of empowering the change you would like to see, also empowers the ideas and people that you would otherwise oppose. Method determines content of the change to a certain degree, but it also influences the world after the elimination of pornography occurs. In this instance, there would be a strengthened organizational structure and social network for the conservative religious groups. Trying to think without considering why and how you begin to do so is politically disadvantageous.
Duncan
This evening I attended a lecture by an animal rights advocate. Largely, he preached to my inner choir on this issue, but he struck a tone on several issues that I found disconcerting. One of those was his demand to “think for yourself” over animal rights. This links to the similar demand to “think different,” which I will also discuss. I’m not really sure what either of these calls means in total, and so I thought about them for a while. Here’s what I thought about.
First, that any thinking that occurs under these terms, by definition, will not actually end up with any radical departure or insight. Essentially, this process cannot be independent because it’s held in relation to ‘traditional thought’ or whatever the thinker presumes to be ‘normal’ about the world. These demands impede thinking freely because of the requirement to separate from or transcend what came before. Also, the distinction of thinking differently means the ideas cannot escape their symbolic roles- you’re always just thinking differently rather than thinking in terms that have immediate political relevance.
Also, “thinking for yourself” atomizes the political significance of thinking in politics. You only think for yourself and your own purposes rather than thinking in terms of the world as other people present it through language and political traditions.
I’m also not sure if “thinking for yourself” is even possible. No thought originates in one persons mind, fully formed, removed from other influences. Every idea relies on what came before, at the very least in a physiological sense: the person who thinks develops over time and in a multiplicity of places, as does their brain. Thought, music, poetry, art, politics depend on history of ideas, and acknowledging your own history in ideas can be a valuable political asset for building links to other people and developing more effective political strategy. For instance: ending distribution of pornography is a goal of both feminist and conservative religious movements. As a feminist, allying yourself with a group that seeks to preserve the moral purity of the female body as sinful could be harmful, because the process of empowering the change you would like to see, also empowers the ideas and people that you would otherwise oppose. Method determines content of the change to a certain degree, but it also influences the world after the elimination of pornography occurs. In this instance, there would be a strengthened organizational structure and social network for the conservative religious groups. Trying to think without considering why and how you begin to do so is politically disadvantageous.
Duncan
posted by Duncan at 8:48 PM
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