Free-thought and its importance.

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Now on to my rant ...

     We pride ourselves in this day and age with being a better society than those that came before. Modern society loves to embrace freedom and the pursuit of it, we think of it as another one of those intrinsic privileges earned from the struggle to liberate ourselves from  darker times. When you look at it we have indeed come a long way in terms of the freedom we have developed. Slavery is now a thing of the past and women are allowed to get an education and what not. Way to go human race, you're getting there but you're not done yet. There are still some freedoms that remain unrealized, prevented by fear and dogma from ever seeing the light of being embraced in a holistic society.

     I'm here to rant about a particular freedom that is sometimes unfortunately shunned and stigmatized in certain societies all over the world, a freedom that I feel is as equally important as other basic human rights such as that to an education and racial equality, I am referring to the right of free thought. Yes I am going to go there, not because I want to intentionally stir up some controversy writing this as a "Malay"sian  but simply because I think that free thought is an essential mechanism for the advancement of  science and human progress  and I would be damned as a communicator of science if I did not play my role in defending it.

     My first contention in the fight for free thought is that unlike the social values of equality and freedom of speech the right to free thought has actually been with us since birth, it is as natural as the curiosity that gets little children to explore the world by poking at it in any way they can. Unlike the obviously contrived Magna Carta , the Charter of Liberties or even the US Bill of Rights we never had to hammer out the workings of the limits of the thought process through stages of  intelligent design. No one ever had to die on the guillotine for free thought, not yet anyway. In a sense, we were all born into the world as free thinkers, dumb, deaf and, blind yes but curious nonetheless. I think that when we realize this we will find that the big and scary Universe is not as big and scary after all because it can be made knowable through the process of gradual investigation. This is the very foundation of the Scientific enterprise.

:Set your mind free: Trust me you'll feel better once you do.

     No one can  capitalize free thought unlike other more common civil liberties. At face value we find that certain liberties are associated with the various identities of their own ideologies, however it isn't as equally easy to associate the thought process with anything other than that of being uniquely a human quality. For example, if you are Malaysian then you live under the Malaysian constitution, likewise if you are Muslim / Christian / Hindu  or Buddhist then you eventually end up living by the principles of those respective world-views. There will always be some other collective entity at play, but I can't recall the last time the firing of neurons in the human mind became linked to any form of written document, agreement between parties or even historical accounts. I'm not sure who quoted it first but I can indeed agree with "An idea is a monument far greater than a cathedral". I stand behind this not because of my own world view as a free thinker but simply because a typical cathedral such as St.Peter's Basilica in Rome was a result of a Renaissance Era culture living on Renaissance Era ethics however the the capacity of building other progressively better monuments (and better ethics) to outstrip the beauty of St.Peter's and the culture that built it lies within the minds of  more than millions of humans around the globe.

     The ultimate of objective a building a society capable of accepting the values of free thought and inquiry is not to give birth to a generation of fact checkers and bookworms. I prefer to look at it as an effective method to inject  healthy doses of skepticism into society. This brings me to my final contention and that is the road to a more progressive and prevalent society. While I do admit there is a long way to go before we reach a any form of societal  Nirvana, there are a few important values that can be learned from thinking freely that anybody, even the devoutly religious would do well to take heed of. I am not trying to enforce the way I look at the world onto other people. What I am attempting to do is to support the idea that a better world would be a world where people are allowed to ask questions even when the notion of it is unpopular or even when it comes off as a rather dangerous act.  This can only come from the values provided by free thought.

Most of the world acknowledge its importance.

     At the end of the day: what good is free speech without free-thought

But what are we really fighting for ? The ability to raise an opinion or that to have one ?

     In conclusion, we live in a world where everything can be made to be lost and nothing is really all too certain. Freedom of mind is all that is  left once you take a good look at where we are and where we are going. Until the day that some mad engineer is able to invent a serum of nano-machines that can be injected into the brain to assume full control of another human being, free thought remains one the most important and intrinsic civil liberties that has ever existed. It's almost like a fine wine that everyone can drink except it's free. 

Peace,
SonOfTerra92,
6/6/2012