Wondering for years

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I would be most appreciative if somebody, anybody!, could help me with the theory and practice of the following statements:

"Follow the money"

"Think for yourself"

Again, I'm interested in THEORY and PRACTICE.

Thank you!

I'm not quite sure what you mean. For "following the money", I'm imagining road signs that are pointing to a pile of cash. Or possibly a trail of dollar bills going around a corner. For the other one, I'd say that's self explanatory. Although, I suppose it could have two meanings. One being to put your needs before others, and another being to, obviously, think for yourself, and not let other people think for you.

What do you mean? You cannot "follow the money" and "follow yourself" at the same time!

I had to ask someone else... But apparently "follow the money" means to look at who is paying for something to happen or who benefits from it. It's from All the President's Men, regarding Watergate. As for practice, I have no idea. I'm terrible at that kind of thing.

When you want the true motivations behind something, look at where the money comes from. You are following the money back to those that are handing it out. An example would be a local town board inexplicably approves a zoning application for a toxic waste dump that nobody wants. But investigations uncover a trail of transactions from the company that wants to build the facility to members of the town board, going through multiple layers of companies and organizations. "Follow the money" backwards from the town board's decision to the original source and you know what was really going on.

I have no problems thinking for myself. It's the follow the money comment that troubles me.

"Think for yourself"
It's a common punk rock saying. It means not following the crowd and doing your own thing. For instance, If everyone around you is doing something you don't like, you shouldn't do it just because they are. Essentially it's not caving into peer pressure. If you like something that nobody else likes, you shouldn't stop doing it on their behalf. Unless of course your stabbing babies or anything heinous like that. Then you should certainly care about what others think.

I've never heard someone say follow the money. The only reason I can think of is if you were trying to start a business, a mentor might say to you 'follow the money' - i.e create your business around something there is a high demand for, so lots of people will be wanting to pay for it.

Think for yourself - my father said that for me lots of times when I was a teenager! That means, when you are presented with a decision or even a thought concept, rather than going along with what your friends and family think and do, you use your own knowledge and sense of right and wrong to make the decision. But note this doesn't always mean you will develop different ideas to them. An example might be, you are at a part and someone starts passing around hash cookies. Everyone is telling you to eat one because they'll make you feel great, and they are all eating too. You could do one of three things: eat one without thinking about it, or you could think about it - you might be suspicious about the effects of eating marijuana, or how it effects your medications, or maybe you had one before andit was really gross, so you decline. Or you could think about it and decide, to hell with it, I'll have one and see what all the fuss is about, it's not like I get stoned regularly.

The latter two choices are examples of thinking for yourself, does that make sense?

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