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snake321
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13 Sep 2006, 8:03 pm

A real free thinker doesn't carry any labels, your not christian or jewish or muslim or pagan or atheist or hindu, your not liberal or conservative or socialist or fuedalist or fascist, your not feminist, your not anything. You just take the parts from different theories that you agree with. Is anyone like that other than me?
It seems that most people percieve the world through a filter of bias by whatever labels they choose to attach to themselves, this kind of division leads to wars and violence. Because people use these labels to define themselves, and they blindly follow everything the herd does or sais, and they get really defensive about protecting their biases.... Usually they'll try to play reverse psychology if you confront them on it, whatever accusations you make they'll turn around and throw the EXACT same accusations at you.... I mean when did emotion replace logic as a platform of thought?



snake321
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13 Sep 2006, 8:31 pm

How arrogant people are about their labels, it's like they CAN'T admit that there is ANY fault in their chosen camps. And if you point the faults out to them they try to play reverse psychology and accuse you of their behavior. It's childish, it's like highschool labelling on a bigger scale.
I mean screw your stupid labels, does anyone care about the real truth anymore? Or is it more important to choose a pre-made layout and pretend it's the unrivaled truth, even against logic and/or evidence?



snake321
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13 Sep 2006, 8:33 pm

the last time I brought this up someone said something about people not liking to think (which I kinda figured out on my own)... But this is an aspie board, I was under the impression aspies are thinker, not followers.



Xuincherguixe
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13 Sep 2006, 8:55 pm

I find the idea of people being completely free from bias hard to accept.

Though some people are less biased than others.

And some people just think they are.



waterdogs
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13 Sep 2006, 9:37 pm

i like to think of myself as a free thinker, more of a truth and what are the facts kindof guy. i'll listen to almost anything if it makes sence and can be proven to a degree



snake321
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13 Sep 2006, 9:52 pm

I've managed to meet atleast a few people on here who as far as I can tell, don't fit into any labels... Some could call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don't believe any of the current interpretations as they are either riddled in christian bias or atheist bias.
I do believe in intelligent design, an alien presence, which I believe describes all the world's major religions. However, just because I believe in intelligent design doesn't mean I don't also believe in evolution, I think our seed was planted to evolve on it's own.



Markendust
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13 Sep 2006, 11:44 pm

I hate both religion and politics. They have caused nothing but harm in this world. Christianity is also the biggest joke in the universe. If God truly was my father, he would have helped me more with my problems related to my asperger suffering. But he never does. I'm nothing to him so he is nothing to me.



Therion
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14 Sep 2006, 5:20 am

Markendust wrote:
I hate both religion and politics. They have caused nothing but harm in this world. Christianity is also the biggest joke in the universe. If God truly was my father, he would have helped me more with my problems related to my asperger suffering. But he never does. I'm nothing to him so he is nothing to me.


Yeah, certainly this was based on facts and not emotions. :P

Seriously, religion plays a more important psychological role than an actual role. Karen Armstrong has written about this, the conflict between modern thinking patterns and pre-modern thinking patterns [which in many ways are suiting most people better]. Personally, I believe that we should leave the word "truth" as a spectre of pre-modern thinking and focus on what the facts are instead. The word "truth" is loaded with a concept of morality which denies all other views and thus create a step-stone to an anti-scientific social climate.

I also do not like objectivist moral philosophy, since morality could never be objective as it requires a thinking subject to reason around it. We could never reach full objectivity, and that is not something which we have to strive for either, but we could be unbiased by trying to step outside of ourselves and view the situation out of several different perspectives.



Malaclypse
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14 Sep 2006, 7:06 am

Therion wrote:
I also do not like objectivist moral philosophy, since morality could never be objective as it requires a thinking subject to reason around it. We could never reach full objectivity, and that is not something which we have to strive for either, but we could be unbiased by trying to step outside of ourselves and view the situation out of several different perspectives.


But in practice, isn't that the thing objectivist philosophers do? Setting the highest goal in that direction seems to me to be the best way to stay out of bias, but I take it you see them as sort of elitist and by definition become biased by that attitude?



Therion
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14 Sep 2006, 8:53 am

No, objectivists [I am not speaking specifically about Randians here] like Locke, Plato, Kant and st. Augustine are often claiming that a specific sort of ethics and values are objective truth, and that we therefore should follow them, without any other basis than rational deduction. We must separate - and have achieved to separate in natural science - the normative morale theories from application on facts. Then objectivists could claim whatever they like. They could be atheists or fundamentalists, communists or libertarians, but the basis on their theory would nevertheless be based rather on reasoning from the self than real natural scientific facts. Therefore, moral objectivism is the worst form of subjectivism.

The idea of good and evil, as in iudeo-christian terminology, have managed to poison the public debate in most western democracies, and is employed by the establishment in order to keep status quo.



wobbegong
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14 Sep 2006, 9:33 am

I think there is a label for everything you just haven't found yours yet.

I am an agnositc - which means to me - I don't know if there is a God or not and I think the answer is irelevant to how I live my life. I don't need the threat of hell or the lure of heaven to try to treat people, the earth and the critters as honourably as I can manage (though I stuff up from time to time).

I am a feminist - which means I think that women should be able to do anything that men can do - anything that doesn't require a sex organ. I don't think I should be excluded or included into roles or jobs based on my gender alone. I don't think men should either. This doesn't make me a feminazi as some would have it.

I am an anarchist - in the traditional sense not the chaotic sense. Someone else on here explained that better than me, but essentially I believe we are far too regulated, there are too many laws and they are stupid for the most part. No nail files on airplanes - how stupid is that? Now no drinking water either? DVT here we come. I think so long as what I do doesn't harm someone else physicially and I'm not going out of my way to mentally persecute someone, then that should be ok (there's probably more qualifiers but that's the gist). Note - if I hurt myself doing something stupid like damage my head falling off a horse when I wasn't wearing a helmet - I should pay all expenses. Of course - stupid is hard to define exactly. I think that laws like wearing seatbelts and helmets are good ones, but why do we need laws for them?

I am a capitalist and a socialist. I think that people should be able to make lots of money and the rate they make money should be derived from how many hours they work, how much time they have spent training or gaining experience (should affect the rate) and the demand for their product/services. I think the base rate of pay - for 40 hours a week should cover the average trolly of groceries for a family of four, and the average rent in that town and should include super, holidays, and sick leave. Anything imported from overseas should be valued (based on their rate of pay for super, holidays and sick leave) and a tariff applied to make up the difference if the o/s worker is not getting any benefits that are paid locally.

I think people who can't look after themselves should be looked after by the state, if possible, trained to look after themselves. I think birth control should be freely available - to help manage the population. I don't want people breeding by accident. I want everyone to plan for and want their children.

And I am an aspie - which in part, means I have a gift for rubbing people up the wrong way.

I probably am racist - though I don't mean to be and I don't get upset when my thoughtlessness is pointed out. I have positive and negative stereotypes about all races and cultures in my head. I know that these stereotypes don't apply to 100% of any population but sometimes I still manage to say the wrong thing or say something that I wouldn't say to someone if I didn't have the stereotype in my head.

I'm also a procrastinator, and a perfectionist, sometimes an idealist, often naive, paranoid, a sceptic, a cynic, an optimist and a pessimist. There's probably more but I'm also lazy. Laziness doesn't go well with perfectionism but I do my best.

I've got no idea if I am a "free thinker", maybe occasionally I have an original idea that hasn't been thought up by someone else but I haven't studied enough philosophy to know.

One thing I'm not is "normal". I'm way off the bell curve in any stat I can think of for mental attributes. Possibly some physical ones too. This makes me weird. However I like being weird. This makes me weird all by itself. 8O



Therion
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14 Sep 2006, 9:57 am

What should we define free thinking as?

Decisions and choices and reactions against events and trends in the community [and presumably not influenced by any other parameter, like a person]?

Or a mind which is so isolated that it in no way could absorb external influence, for example a brain in a vacuum?



snake321
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14 Sep 2006, 12:28 pm

capitolism, socialism, and feminism are labels.... So is anarchy but I actually pretty much agree with it, though if there's something I don't agree with about it I'm not gonna pretend to agree just to wear the hat. Personally I believe in womens' rights but I am anti-feminist, as modern feminism is largely set around man-hating lesbians (note I have no problem with homosexuality either). Capitolism is the lifeblood of heirarchy, I personally think we should find a better way than money.
i think the best form of government would contain aspects of democracy and socialism (= anarchy), geniocracy, and technocracy. I also believe we need an anti-heirarchy system, we must breed future generations out of tribal codes (this will take time). Geniocracy is a term I actually picked up off the Raelians, it means government by the intellectual people... Only smart people should be able to vote, or run for a delegated office (I believe in delegations, not elections). Even then I think there should be more than 2 people running for a delegation though, more like atleast 5 or 6 people.



Malaclypse
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14 Sep 2006, 6:59 pm

Therion wrote:
No, objectivists [I am not speaking specifically about Randians here] like Locke, Plato, Kant and st. Augustine are often claiming that a specific sort of ethics and values are objective truth, and that we therefore should follow them, without any other basis than rational deduction. We must separate - and have achieved to separate in natural science - the normative morale theories from application on facts.


Aha, thanks for clearing that up. Then I agree with you to the last detail.

Therion wrote:
The idea of good and evil, as in iudeo-christian terminology, have managed to poison the public debate in most western democracies, and is employed by the establishment in order to keep status quo.


Yup, but I've lately been inspired to think that that's a good thing. Keeping a global or national balance by whatever means is necessary for global trades etc. and we've come too far to go back to e.g. small, municipal governments everywhere. I mean that as a psychologically evolutionary fact, not just by cultural indoctrination. People who want to break out of it bad enough will do so and as long as no one is controlled beyond the scope of the opinion of the herd it's an okay deal in my view. I'm slightly weighing the Brave New World message against that opinion, but in that scenario the world isn't controlled by a democracy. Francis Bacon's argument is similar, but I acknowledge that it only works to a certain extent of governmental influence on political correctness.



hyperbolic
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14 Sep 2006, 7:13 pm

I'm a freethinker, but I try not to freethink aloud. You never know who's listening.



Oceanfloor
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15 Sep 2006, 1:06 am

Therion wrote:
Then objectivists could claim whatever they like. They could be atheists or fundamentalists, communists or libertarians, but the basis on their theory would nevertheless be based rather on reasoning from the self than real natural scientific facts. Therefore, moral objectivism is the worst form of subjectivism.



And aren't the ramifications of these teachings precisely what we've come to abhor and the overreaction what we now struggle with?

E.g. :


Quote:
I hate both religion and politics. They have caused nothing but harm in this world.


Quote:
It seems that most people percieve the world through a filter of bias by whatever labels they choose to attach to themselves, this kind of division leads to wars and violence.


Quote:
Moral values are subjective. Different people have different standards and their own ideas of what is right and wrong.


Quote:
The people considering themselves to be the most Moral, are the ones causing the most wars and death and despair and mayhem and unhappiness (i.e. the christians and the muslims). The pro-lifers and the homo-phobes are a good example, what business is it of theirs what other people do in their bedroom or with their bodies? Stop imposing Morality and being reptillian and start enjoying a peacefull life...



Our lying prophets have poisoned our sense of higher duty and hierarchy altogether, and now we want to quietly lay aside the task of truth because it involves the task of negation and nay-saying. Wills to power like the ones above go on as before, but not very well disguised in a new hypocrisy of post-modern indignant intolerance of the intolerant. There's a lot of moral satisfaction in denouncing morality, apparantly. We remain suspicious of anything with the taste of self-affirmation: because that ultimately is what the objectivists Therion spoke of did in the past, disguising it as objective realization--but this suspicion leads us to--a moral conclusion?