You want to know what thinking is? Thinking is just a fancy word for changing your mind.

Dr. Who – Zygon Inversion Speech

The essay questions the process and ability to think. Is it the raw ability to process information and experiences, forming them together in an educated opinion, and one may come after you and do it better? Or is it conforming to the consensus waiting for one brave enough to become the new divergent variant who pushes back and changes the landscape we all have been footed on? Running the risk of accepted facts becoming dogma and restricting and limiting growth. 

Pointing out the goal isn’t originality, nor should it be, but the will to be an individual free thinker is. Restricting that freedom is where the thin line of dogma comes into play, leaning on the old crutch of yesterday’s knowledge forsaking any and all advancements. Much like how freedom of speech doesn’t protect just accepted speech but, more importantly, undesirable speech and therefore allows for greater expressions, regardless of how tasteful or tasteless the expression may be. Leading to the one question most education reformers have asked, is it learning or just the student parroting what they memorized in the course of their education? 

Feeding the complexity of this issue is the ease and convenience of technology in how we communicate. What started out as a DVD rental service quickly became a streaming platform; what was a college experiment became social media, and that bottleneck has created problems as a platform that only lives or dies based on the traffic of the users. Leading to a race to attract people through controversies, offers of ad-free experiences, and the promise of financial compensation in cash, tokens, or crypto. As the competition between Tesla and Edison, with DC being Tesla and AC being Edison, the former being more expensive, less applicable to a broad application, and the latter being cheaper, more applicable, and more able to be expanded as society and ease of access to materials and area comes into play. This was and would not be possible if people were stuck in the old ways of thinking. Before natural gas, we had a coal heater, and the intention that would become play doh was used to clean the soot off the wall and explains why it can perfectly copy a comic strip in a newspaper when applied to the paper but less harmful chemicals. It was the natural gas bumping out coal that gave way to a kid in a science fair using that compound for a model, creating the idea of creating Play-Doh. The expansion of technology has allowed for ideas to be rapidly fired out onto the internet, but sensationalist outlets and people with ill intent will use this to do their thing before the truth can strap on its shoes and get out, the very same thing of putting the cart before the horse. Failing to wait for all the facts, as in the Covington Catholic kids and that Native American drummer with social media running with a clip less than a minute long, ignorant of the 2-hour video available that debunked all their claims. This led to people afraid to rile the hornet’s nest of popular social media jumping in on the ban wagon, assuming the kid was being racist with his square white jaw and the timid old Native American drummer, let’s not mind the Black Nationalist in the background who were there all along. Internet 1.0 is gone, and Internet 2.0 and on is here gone is MySpace ceding to Facebook (Meta), Vine was a concept too early for its time, and now TikTok. As attention spans shrink, people are quick to change media if not caught in the first 15 seconds or avid fans of the content. 

The author now questions if this is happening in Universities, where ideas are meant to be challenged, like on the Stoa, where the Stic philosophy was born and the advent of the Socratic Method, reducing everything to the first principles and always asking why. Has convention and consensus limited the students and us on accepted speech and topics worth broaching and questioning? As Author Shpenhauer, in an elevator pitch, put it, we are pushed forward by our past in what we want to replicate and wish to cut out, pulled forward by the future in the goals derived from those intentions. This leads to the question of free will, but this aptly applies to schooling. Are we really learning or just repeating what is told to us by convention? The goal for grants and funding often drives the intentions of many projects and, therefore, often limits the scope of educational indevours. Compounding this issue is the drive towards community humans have and the wish to fit in. As the founders feared an under-educated or uneducated populace being swayed by a faction and the quote, “A republic if you can keep it” people did not heed this warning and still opted for groupthink and faction or parties. Times and parties changed even though the nature of the parties has changed. But the primitive drive is rooted in the communal nature of mankind. Leading people to view one as morally bankrupt and the other as a lesser evil.

As Professor Anthony explains thoroughly in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxmXeLEcs9s&t=1393s

We place ourselves in boxes, with rules and regulations all limiting us, much like how Schopenhauer asks about free will. Can we think for ourselves or just thinking what w are allowed? As in the speech reenacted by Andrew Scott – Choose one of five

Where once educated, the new test that is self-proctored will be a lifelong test on how you will express that knowledge. I would like to be number five in that option, but truth be told, we are all of those numbers at one stage in our lives, and even in a debate, attacking their person leads people to lock down and, even if false, not budge on their position. An introspective person will be able to resist this, but nonetheless, this is human nature and is rooted in our evolution as social beings. The limit is 100 known names, and the memory palace technique has expanded that, but getting a younger person to remember the top ten phone numbers will often not be fulfilled. Get a boomer or Gen X, and that is more common why technology has grown up with the Millennial generation. Causing the aged motto of the new generation. Doesn’t know how easy they have it, or in my day comments. This is allowed vis thinking. It is not a crutch to admit to standing on the shoulders of giants, nor is it weak not to have exerted less effort to get done what required more effort in previous generations. 

Risks linked to thinking and the tides of change are contrarian. There is a healthy amount of skepticism when that is meat with facts that cannot be rebuffed or refuted. Leading people to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. This is not to say one doesn’t have the right to question reality, but when the reality is there, and you still say neigh, that is not thinking. Just like the risk of consensus or groupthink running rampant in schools, you run the risk of falling into groupthink that opposes facts on the ground. 

As we look back on the tales of old and myths that ancient kingdoms were built on, as Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia, Herakles from Greece, or Sampson from the Abrahamic religions all having rhyming similarities, naked, club or weapon no one else can lift, and divine one nature or another. Or the myriad of flood myths around the world and the equinoxes inspiring tales of deities mourning their lost kids to the underworld as in Native American folklore and Greek myths. The tale of Maui and his legend from Hawaii. Zeus and Odin Herakles and Thor. All of these legends are because of thinkers making sense of the world we live in and trying to survive. To hinder these processes because of overindulgence, as in contrarians, or because of a risk to the orthodox, as in the mid-evil dark ages. Or herbalists being accused of being witches, berserkers of being werewolves or were-bears. The fae folk is accused of stealing kids upon birth because of the lack of understanding of birth defects and congenital diseases, leading to horrific abuse stories. We have left those traditions in the past because, in the process of thinking, we have learned and, therefore, changed our minds on the nature of this world, understanding how to live better and choosing, most of the time, the lesser evil. But politicization and tribalism run opposite to thinking critically. Defending one’s thoughts with confidence is not folly, but defending past the point of being disproven is harmful. We still use DC for batteries and AC for powering our places of residence. It was the process of thinking that we put those functions in place. 

As the author put in the essay, thinking is:

• A combination of conscience and unconscious (dreams are where we process unprocessed information, and the expression “Just sleep on it” came from)
• Rational and intuitive as we have all rationally explained away and well just know or knew the answer just had to do the leg work to justify it.
• Logical and emotional as being distant or removed from the event allows for logic like the ending of A Plagues Tale logically it was correct to the act. But emotionally, we all know that was not the proper answer as all that effort fight not to be alone, and the love for Hugo restricts that answer. 

Also, not to become so distant that we end up more like a biological computer cold calculating ad distant, the ultimate utilitarian. 

The reference to race, ethnicity, class, and gender are categories we all reflexively place ourselves in; how could we not? We all see, view, and experience the world through “I” and then incorporate that into “We” as a member of society. Find people of similar backgrounds and, therefore, possibly lock off routes of thinking that could expand our limits and compassion. The term, for lack of words, is to be empathetic to people you know nothing about. Cosomopolitism promotes being a citizen of the world and is rooted in that thinking, and while practicing solipsism to be introspective, keep in mind one is a member of a community. Just remember, we are all living on a spectrum from deontology and utilitarianism to introversion or extroversion. As the author put it, the way to think past your identity is to be in communication with other identities, the “I” being incorporated into the “We” and being made better for it. 

As laid out, the problem with people building a system of power they use to instill order is that people tend to lock or want to lock off avenues for people to take that would question that power. The author uses China, Religion, and even Greek and Roman civilizations as they feared slaves, female and non-land owners thinking for themselves. I will use Encanto as the grandmother suffered a great loss, and that loss created pain. Through that pain, she created order through a gift given to her from that pain. Order achieved a system in place, and undesired truths expelled (not trying to spoil it too much). The threats to order will and shall be contained. Placing undue pressure limits even if the person looks as if they are in positions of privilege, and restriction of the ones coming up, again standing on the shoulders of giants. The tale of Ragnorak is famous for this because even after Asgard fell, three of the Aesir lived, and life began anew, not so much the end of the world, just of the world as they knew it. It is a cycle of destruction and change. Too much chaos is just as disorientating and sickening as too much order; one must balance those elements and feed the proper wolf for the occasion. It was Odin’s attempts to avoid Ragnarok that made Ragnarok, and the same with the grandmother from Encanto. Or the many Nordic tales like the Volsunga Saga, where if they just thought about it and didn’t pursue that revenge, then the fate they encountered would not have happened. Same with Oleg and his tale, it wasn’t until all that suffering did he make it better, and then sprang a new cycle of prosperity. 

As Alan Watts put it where choices are the moments of pause in between your actions, “the decisive moment, when you have a choice to ignore this flickering unease or to begin to wonder why” in regards to seeing a pattern and the error in the pattern, choosing to act on that and explore the possibilities, or bury your head in the sand, living on to the next day a cog in the machine. Granted, this is a privilege that technology and future generations will have more often than older generations; after all, you don’t notice your issues until you have time to sit down and let it all sink in. NF Witt Lowry, Mesus, Mass of Man, Burden, Sasha Sloan, and many that will come or came before noticed material wealth only exposed their inner issues, and that grind that was before their material wealth distracted them from the inner issues. 

Learn to separate the I from the equation when you need to and be introspective when it is applicable. The thinking and thought-altering process comes later when the dust has settled, and the storm has passed. And mind the motive of the person or your intent on why one is pursuing this course, as it could lend to the path one takes, a critical free thinker or contrarian, or will you conform to the masses. We cannot know everything, pick the one thing you know and can master it to your liking and take on the world, rely on others after their muster has been tested, and do not disregard the novel for fear of change, don’t embrace the novel to spite the system. 

As quoted here, “For it feels like the idea is thinking you, thinking itself into being, inside your head,” Do our thoughts have us, or do we have thoughts?

https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/epistemological-panic-or-thinking-for-yourself/