Any person who yields slavishly to the wisdom of the age and obeys unwittingly the strict commandments from the lips and pens of ancient men may pass on this blog. It shall contain no guide on how to improve one’s standing to societal convention, no invective on those who rebel against it, no lamentation on those who forsake the tradition of their fathers, and no psalm to beseech the Lord to take vengeance on those who lay waste of holy, ancient tradition. This blog shall be to the thinker, the person to whom mere conventionality is poison and unquestioned tradition a mortal sin from the ruins of hell. The person who simply thinks, and worships in the temple of reason all the days of their life.
Many people dreamed of being a thinker. But seldom can one find a thinker. A thinker is a rara avis, one who annihilates all chains bound upon them since infancy, one whose thoughts roar like thunder, demanding to be heard all around the world. For true, original thought cannot be hidden; its light is too bright and it shines brilliantly without end, as thought produces ideas and ideas never die. To be a thinker requires one to have courage, and courage requires one to be virtuous. And so it is that thinking requires a good moral character.
One finds themselves greatly impoverished if they supplant true thought with advanced degrees or conventional acceptance. Those who are the possessors of these things suspend true thought to appease someone else. It is often the case that the most decorated thinker is the worst thinker. For people decorate those who mirror how they think and clothe their ego with marvelous stupidity only they would want to believe. But people render the true thinker as a heretic who is primed to be hanged by conventional judgment, as their thinking makes most people’s ego naked and burns their pride with a fire that can never be quenched. True thought is seldom appreciated in a thinker’s lifetime and is cast into the sea of neglect and forgetfulness when the thinker is among them. But inevitably, when necessity bears witness to true thought, the thinker is revered long after they are gone and their ideas are explored and appreciated for their intellectual weight and value.
It is a wise thing to separate from a group and abandon conventionality that doesn’t agree with reason. For it is with common sense one can discover the absurdity of most conventional practices. For instance, one finds that university education is designed to lead to a mere middle class subsistence and leaves one vulnerable to the government and rich people’s machinations in controlling the economy. Also, one finds that taking a calculated risk leads to a better chance of financial success than playing it safe and working for someone else. These discoveries were made by simply thinking after evaluating the data collected from the world. For everyone, the tools to think critically are infinite, but the permission for one’s self to use them is often severely limited.
One can catch the scent of a non-thinking person by their simple utterances. When engaging them, one quickly discovers that they aren’t encountering a person who has independently thought things through. They encounter slogans, phrases and unsubstantiated propaganda. One can labor long and hard to reveal true thought to these people, but their minds are in a cave stuck observing the shadows that give them familiarity and comfort. The tribe that gives their lives meaning; the freedom they reject for fear of being alone. For one can surmise that conformity is the result of fear, and fear is bereft of courage. And so it is again that thinking must result in having a good moral character.
I find Diogenes of Sinope to be a thinker. He eschewed societal convention and lived as an animal in Ancient Greece. He was a Cynic, or dog in Greek, and he sought virtue without the vain pursuits of money and resources. At birth, Diogenes was just like other babes. His thoughts peered no harder than anyone else’s. But he made a turn when he aged and gave himself the permission to think. He was unbound to convention, manumitted from others’ expectations and eager to explore the intellectual world around him. He was a thinker not by birth, but by the courageous act to think for himself and use his God power to conceive of the world as he desired.
However, a thinker must endure great struggle. A thinker must challenge the very fears and prejudices that plague them. It is a war that never ceases and a battle that never ends. And, as a good soldier, one must be fit to fight until the very end– whenever that might be. The weaknesses that a thinker harnesses soon become albatrosses around their neck if they persist in possessing them. The battle in one’s self is to destroy those weaknesses; the victory is in destroying those weaknesses and replacing them with strengths. Therefore, a thinker must face the perennial challenge daily and accept the facts and evidence as a slave accepts a commandment from their master, for reason is supreme and it will govern supreme forever. It shall not be destroyed; it shall not be dethroned or deracinated from the earth and beyond. All who obey it shall live, but all who disobey shall perish as leaves of grass perish from fire. And thus, a thinker is one who learns how to die in order to learn how to live.
It is the task of every thinker to entertain that which they find absurd. They must talk to those who lack knowledge and sacrifice themselves for the well-being of others and the world. This they must do even under the penalty of death. They do this because a thinker must accept that the very exercise of thinking demands one to be virtuous. It involves one to accept that the world does not submit to one’s own design of it and the thinker must participate as part of the world. As being part of the world, they must understand the world to gain truth and wisdom. They must understand the reason the earth revolves around the sun or why water nourishes the plants and animals in all of the earth or why the great winds of the sea rise and fall as the seasons come and go. Truth and wisdom are gained in wondering about these things, and truth and wisdom revolutionize the world. The world cannot grow if truth and wisdom are locked away. It must shine, and shine brightly before all people to be received and practiced. If thinkers are no more, the world shall be no more. Thus, a thinker must act not in vainglory and hubris but with self-sacrifice and obedience to the enterprise of thinking.
Therefore, the common element to thinking is contained in one principle: if one desires to think, courage is necessary. One can never hope to be a thinker without it. All geniuses in history had immense talent, some less, some more, but they all had courage. Courage to break new ground; courage to disagree with societal convention; courage to anger people with new ideas, for anyone can become a thinker if they dare to think.
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