The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself

We rid ourselves of the blinders of ideology by
constantly asking ourselves: How do I feel? How's
my life? What do I want? Am I getting what I
want? If not, why not? This is being conscious of
the commonplace, being aware of your everyday
routine. That real life exists--life in which you
are active, a subject acting to achieve your
desires--is a public secret that becomes less
secret every day, as the breakdown of daily life
constructed around abstraction-based ideologies
becomes more and more obvious.

Ah, but most of us live in two worlds, living and
breathing the contradiction, about half
ideological and half of the above and blind to
the conflict.

Makes for some very strange shit, from where I
sit.

But I'm just passin' thru. Y'all just carry on
with what you were doing.

Conversely, what many leftists, therapy mongers,
racism awareness trainers, and sisterizers term
"consciousness raising" is the practice of
beating people into unconsciousness with guilt-
inducing, ideological billyclubs.

Pack your bags. You're goin' on a guilt trip
is what he's saying.

But the dude forgot the rightists and their
incessant devotion to God, the flag, duty and the
preservation of the tribe with little regard to
the conscientious objector.

And just keep packin' those bags, folks.

Now this author got it about half right, but like
many good thinkers wanders off on The Group Mind
Fuck in the last third of his piece, going on another
trip to one -ism or another.

Aack!

How will "belonging" to any "school of thought"
promote your personal (r)evolution? How is that
different from "just another ideology", that which
the author decries?

Shouldn't we leave all that shit in the
wastebasket of history where it belongs if we're
really interested in the exercise of free
will? Do we need membership cards to do it?

Isn't a personal theory a brand new bag?

What is it in us that wants to re-make the world
in a collectively inspired image rather than
concerning ourselves with just re-making our own
world in our own way?

Are we hard wired to be only leaders or followers,
that ol' 'either or' thing?

I don't believe it.

There is a third way.

Read the whole thing to see what I mean.