Originally Posted by
emmanuel2012 
I would like to pose a question to the community:
Dangerous thoughts are not dangerous for having, but for the potential dangerous action that may result from thinking. Right? Or is having a dangerous thought in and of itself dangerous?
I don't think thoughts are dangerous. Lately I've been working on an novel wherein some people and a dog die, and humanity is threatened. It takes a lot of thought to put together a story (and even to read one), but we don't consider that dangerous, not normally anyway.
If Poe's
Imp of the Perverse were to strike and I was entertaining the idea of doing something that I thought was dangerous, how would I counter it? With another thought.
I'm wary of people who tend toward irrationality, but in every case that I can think of, the irrationality is the result of faulty belief, not of thought per se.
We live in a hive-mind society. Going against the grain, even if sometimes trendy, can lead us into problems. Thinking for yourself in recovery is even frowned upon.
The whole "you can't trust your brain" stuff bothers me too. If you aren't doing your own thinking, someone else is doing it for you. Doesn't sound like a great idea to me.
Its even worse in some countries, I'm sure.
But will there ever be a "information police" or a "thought police?"
You mean in the free world? I think it exists, at least to an extent. There is the case of the woman who was charged with obscenity for writing fictional stories of horrible, unthinkable stuff. She had a website and required a $10 credit card charge to safeguard against children accessing her site. She ended up serving one year under "house arrest." There is a great deal of obscenity on the internet, but the case involved only fictional stories.
Does anyone here have emotional issues about how our society works
And what lack of encouragement we have for members of society to think for themselves, and to question authority? What people perceive as my "paranoia" or their conclusions about me spending too much time on the internet,or crazy conspiracy theories that I entertain longer than most people because I like to think things through and not immediately discredit and idea or theory based only its apparent insanity? Remember how insane they thought conpernicus was when he proposed that the earth revolved around thenot the other way around..
The problem of "the good of society" vs. "the good of the individual" has been around since . . . probably since the infancy of culture. I watched my in-laws go through a series of conspiracy theories that led to, among other things, moving into a cave at one point, moving to an aleutian island with nothing but a camper, refusing any medical care or education for the their six children, etc. In the end, even if the conspiracies had been real, thinking so wasn't worth the cost. I'm seeing my brother starting to slide into that same mindset, and it's very sad because he's obviously so unhappy. I think we're wired to be hyper-alert and wary of danger, and when bears, wolves, snakes and disease were common killers, it served us well. Now, not so much. It's as likely to make us crazy as not.
Everytime I get into discussions about these topics with people in person,
I end up feeling very disgruntled and confused. Maybe my views are too radical,
But maybe they aren't being respected either. if Freedom of mind and thought is not honored within society, freedom of action won't be either.
I don't know that either ever really was. It's not really the purpose of society, I don't think. Society exists to further itself, which is in many ways very good for the individual and in other ways not so good.
What this boils down to is that I don't trust society. Democracy is not all that great, because even if you have it working as its supposed to, the majority is still making decisions for me. I think the majority of people are generally uneducated and cannot think for themselves.
You're in good company. That's what Plato's Republic was all about, and it was written about 400 B.C.E.
At least I'm sober and coherent today, thinking about all of this. Maybe all the LSD I took is having its way with me hahaha. But I just wanted to rant and get things off my chest here. Feel free to reply. I just don't want an argument. Please do not argue with me, I usually win LOL.
I usually get censored - LOL!