Think For Yourself - A New View On the World
The most complex questions in life are often the ones asked in the most direct way. What’s the meaning of life? Is there a heaven? Are we free thinkers? All of those questions remain unanswered for the most part. Some claim they know the answer, and there are those who believe the ones with the answers. And then, there’s those who go out of their way to get you to believe in their answers. The reality is, there’s a lot of people like that. They’re everywhere. They’re your news broadcasters, your politicians, the list goes on. In this world, you have two options. You either think for yourself, or you allow others to think for you.
Before I could respond to the statement, I had to define what it meant to ‘think for yourself’. After a bit of thought, I came with my own definition.
Thinking for yourself (verb): To make decisions based on your beliefs and logic. To be able to rationalize information given by others.
Now to answer the question. Do I think for myself? For the most part, I believe I do. My beliefs were formed thanks to the care of my parents and those around me. But my interests are just that, mine. Even though my morals and beliefs were taught to me as a child, I am now a young adult who can (and does) think and act based on my interests. When faced with a problem at hand, I tend to look at both sides of the equation. I’m a very indecisive person, often going back and forth on a big issue. Sometimes I have to tell myself to make up my mind already.
That’s not to say I’m an impenetrable mind and no outside force can phase me. Making decisions requires you to know what’s going on. If I don’t know what’s going on, I’m more likely to seek knowledge from a trustworthy person. With their knowledge I become a bit more informed, but also a bit more biased. The knowledge they give me has been provided to me, but with their interest in mind.
Trust is an important aspect in whether or not you can think for yourself. My family and friends are people that I trust, so I am more likely to take their knowledge more seriously than knowledge I receive from someone who’s only interested in my trust. Outside forces like advertisement agencies seek our trust so we’re more likely to buy their knowledge. In The Persuaders; a documentary that explores the inner workings of ad agencies for politicians and big name companies, they bring light to the tactics people will try to us in order to obtain our trust. From emotional TV commercials to hand picked words, companies will pay millions to learn how a consumer thinks. These companies know that if they have one person believe in the advertisement, then that person’s friends will be more likely to believe as well.
Even seemingly trustworthy news sources have their bias. In Frank Rich’s “Truthiness Stages a Comeback” article, he focuses on presidential candidate John McCain and the propaganda he and his group are spreading. While Rich’s article provides sources for the statements he makes, his intent in the article is to make the McCain campaign a joke. Reading his article closely, it’s very apparent Frank Rich is for the other candidate, whom he only brings up a few times. If someone read this article and trusted what the New York Times published, it’s likely they’ll agree with all of Rich’s points without giving it too much thought.
The ability to think for yourself is more powerful than it seems on the surface. Not being able to think for yourself doesn’t appear to be all that bad, but in reality it truly is. If you are not the one doing the thinking and making the decisions, someone else will be. These decisions vary from what kind of clothes you buy to the life altering choice of what career you pursue. Its big decisions such as these that I find myself worrying too much about actually. It has been over a year since I’ve begun to seriously start thinking about what career I’ll go into, and I can honestly say I’m not further than I was before in deciding. At this point I sometimes wish that someone would just decide for me, just so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. But I know that allowing someone else to decide for me will in the long run not benefit me.
It saddens me to know that most people aren’t even aware of this problem. But then again, the only way they’d ever find out is on their own or through their media. Chances are, the media that wants and profits from people’s ignorance aren’t going to report on it. If children were taught at a younger age that the television shows they watched were brainwashing them to buy their products, perhaps they wouldn’t be so susceptible. But our school system isn’t going to invest the limited funds they have on making kids free thinkers. Instead they want the opposite. Teachers have to discipline the children so that they focus on their work, which just prepares them to work in office jobs doing the exact same thing. Often times children are punished for displaying such behavior, they are described as being ’distractions in the classroom’. In Richard Rodriguez’s “Aria”, he describes what it was like growing up in a society where non-English languages wasn’t encouraged. His family was told to speak more English at home and less Spanish. Rodriguez held onto his personal language, and resisted in joining his family members.
When I first read “Aria”, I thought the author was definitely strange. I couldn’t relate to him, English is not only my public but my private language as well. But after looking harder at his writing, I could see that Rodriguez was thinking for himself at a very young age. He did what he felt was right and denied what society expected out of him. The downside was that thinking for himself caused a segregation from him and his family.
His situation raised a question for me, was thinking for yourself more important than family? Even politicians face this, they either go along with the party or they stand firm with their decisions. In my definition of family, I believe the love we share with each other outweighs what morals we share. Unlike a political party, families are not formed by ideas but through love. Parents will (and should) love their children despite the decisions they make. And even if the parents don’t return their love, there are people in this world who will and new families can be formed.
Thinking for yourself is not only just an action, it’s an outlook on life. Once you become critical of the news and information you receive from outside sources, you never stop. Because once you realize the impact that not thinking for yourself does, it feels as though one has been struck by an epiphany. The big question really does feel like a command, and command to take actions into your hands or someone else will. But once you decide how you’re going to view the information in this world, there’s no going back.
- 2008
