Against Free Thinkers
Freethinker. One who has rejected authority and dogma, especially in his religious thinking, in favor of rational inquiry and speculation. American Heritage Dictionary
Individual whose opinions are formed on the basis of an understanding and rejection of tradition, authority or established belief. Wikipedia
Many people see themselves as "free thinkers," with minds open to new ideas and perspectives. They describe themselves positively as favoring rationality, but in practice their negative self-definition seems to have more force. Even when they turn out to have been wrong, freethinkers are proud of having resisted social pressure toward conventional wisdom.
Freethinkers see the deck stacked against new or contrary ideas, and see their own brave contrarian stance as a needed antidote to unreasonable conformity pressures. On net, however, freethinkers deserve much of the blame for resistance to new ideas. Bryan Caplan explains:
Suppose you’re interviewing a smart guy [for a job], without a college degree, and he offers you a money-back guarantee. You might think "What a great deal" and accept. But then again, you might start thinking "What a weirdo. What’s wrong with him?" And this, I propose, is the stumbling block to lots of worthwhile innovations. A person with an unconventional idea may have a point, but is also unlikely to be "normal." He may not fit it with other people. He may have problems with authority. He may be deviant in more ways than one!
The problem is that on average people who support odd ideas are less desirable as associates, and less discriminating in which ideas they endorse. If people only endorsed odd ideas when they had new information suggesting such ideas were promising, we should be eager to hear of such news, and eager to associate with such people. But in fact the main task faced by those with good news on odd ideas is to distinguish themselves from freethinkers who just pretend to have such news. Contrary to their self-image, undiscriminating freethinkers are our main obstacle to innovation.
For what it is worth I think the term freethinker is an oxymoron in an of itself. If one is compelled to think about things than one is a slave to subjective experience and interpretation. The stupid birds in the trees are more capable of actual freethinking than humans because their lack of awareness affords them no desire to understand or figure things out philosophically. They simply behave, while we contemplate our behavior and become chained to the realization of it. Our wills are not free and our thoughts are not free. We are all slaves to the process of thought. And however one might desire to be in control and believe him/herself rational, rational understanding undermines any belief in control, freedom (or even morality) as the evidence for such things is as absent as the evidence for the existence of God. So many people who call themselves “freethinkers” slavishly preach about morality and atheistic ideologies, as if the very nihilistic nature of our seemingly accidental existence is not ever present in their desperate (and quite often socially hostile and/or egotistical) rants against those they see as inferior due to some arbitrary (in the greater scheme of things) aspect of perspective. Besides, life is so much more interesting when one can at least shake off labels and the need to cast blame and just live.
There is a neo-mystic group that tries to display a pathetic veneer of rationality and sense of motive when in truth and in reality, it is a great enemy of reason and individual liberty. The strategy it employs is no longer unfamiliar to us since its proponents and followers are merely imitating the statist schemes of their collectivist/altruist intellectual and philosophical ancestors.This loud, skeptic collective—the Filipino Freethinkers, which deserves the moniker “Free-farters”—declares that it is engaged in the promotion of reason, science, and freedom. Its liberal, welfare-statist creator and its radical fanatics, came up with a crude understanding of reason as if it stands side-by-side with science, or perhaps even math.
Filipino Free-farters: enemy of reason
The psycho-epistemology of the Free-farters is revealed by its eccentric, sophomoric appreciation of reason: “When you try to use reason and science to reach your own conclusion about something, you are freethinking.” (emphasis not mine)
History tells us that the intellectual and philosophical predecessors of the Free-farters also used the power of language to destroy man’s mind. For example, Immanuel Kant, the man who shut the door of philosophy to reason, waged a philosophical war on man’s mind, not by destroying reason but by distorting, negating its concept. By dividing the universe into two—phenomenal world, which is not real, and the noumenal world, which is the ‘real’ reality yet unknowable—Kant declared that man’s mind is impotent.
However, it may be true that some, if not most, of the Free-farters do not believe in philosophy, but they cannot escape the fact that every single person holds a certain philosophy or belief system. They might say consciously that philosophy is impractical or nonexistent, but the very fact that they are espousing a mongrel idea proves that they hold a certain form of reasoning. When an individual says, “I can’t prove it, but I feel that it’s true,” he is actually echoing the idea of Kant.On the other hand, the man who shut the door of freedom to reason is Karl Marx, who pulled an impractical joke on humanity by contriving an idea that distorted the true essence of freedom, liberty, equality, and justice. Karl Marx, who is the intellectual ancestor of most unthinking, careless atheists of today, held that man cannot take care of himself, thus he needs the omnipotent and ever benevolent guidance and presence of a higher being, which is the state. If the religionists believed that the source of all wealth and welfare is an unknowable deity or a supernatural being they call God, the new breed of atheists hold that the sole provider of man’s needs is the society or the state by means of limiting or abrogating of private property and of redistributing wealth.http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2...