Think for Yourself: Master Independent Thought in 4 Steps (Patrick King's "The Independent Thinker")

The Independent Thinker Written by Patrick King Narrated by Russell Newton. What does it really mean to be an independent thinker? In the spirit of originality, let’s begin not with the perspective of this book’s author, but with yours. When you opened this book, you had a few expectations about what you’d find inside, as well as some idea of why you were reading such a book. These expectations may be unconscious, or you may be more aware of them.

But whatever they are, they’re an excellent starting point for the themes and ideas we’ll be exploring in the chapters that follow.

The Levels Of Mastering Independent Thought. In choosing this book, you’ve already shown a desire for, or interest in, independent thought. Some part of you is already independent. And yet, ironically, in picking up a book that guides and teaches you how to be more independent, you must necessarily already lack this characteristic. If you were truly independent, you would not need the book, right? Take a moment to imagine in your mind’s eye everything you associate with an “independent thinker."

Imagine it now, before you read on. Imagine what it looks like, sounds like, and how you envision you’ll be once you are a more critical thinker, a more authentic individual and self-governing agent able to live in the integrity of their ideals, instead of other people’s. Now, this somewhat disheartening start is simply to illustrate that many people are merely imitating autonomy in the personal development world.

They have a picture of what they think this looks like, and they try their best to perform that image.

Level 1 - A Patchwork Identity. Maybe in your mind, you’re attracted to the “cool guy” aesthetic that certain celebrities, authority figures, historical personages and fictional characters put forward. Maybe you like the attitude of the rebel, who is confident, a little arrogant, and so, so appealing. Maybe, without realizing it, you mimic the mannerisms, beliefs, thoughts, and speech patterns of people you admire.

Or maybe you buy into certain shared cultural ideals of what intelligent, independent, enterprising or creative people ought to look like. Teenagers are masters at mimicry and creating patchwork identities from bits and pieces they find in their world. It’s as though you show up to the great Identity Marketplace, being a blank slate yourself, and pick and choose the costume and role you like best. It’s not a personality so much as a curated collection.

While a 13-year-old going through a goth phase in the 90s may be a blatant example of this, we all do it to some extent. We even do this when we’re explicitly trying not to do it (i.e., “I want to be a truly unique individual! Now, let’s Google some other people who are doing that and see how it’s done…”). This is the first level on the path of independent thinking.

Level 2 - Developing trust in the self. If you’ve been in level 1 for any length of time, you’ll notice something obvious - it’s uncomfortable, and it doesn’t really “work." You don’t feel like yourself because you aren’t yourself. No matter how compelling and well-crafted the patchwork is, it’s still just a mask, and it doesn’t contain you. Now, this isn’t a problem. Humans are social creatures, and imitation is a normal and healthy part of engaging the external world.

But eventually, as we develop and mature into our authentic selves, imitation is not enough. In level 2, you gradually experiment with being and acting in the world as yourself, without a mask and the influence of other people. You begin to tire of other people’s filters and interpretations and become curious about your own, which you realize are valid. In all honesty, becoming an independent thinker can feel scary, awkward and outright weird.

It can also feel lonely, like you are suddenly far away from the warm, comfortable crowd and have to suddenly take full responsibility for your own reality. So, in this stage, you are experimenting with being more independent, falling back into convention, playing with trial and error to test your perceptions, and developing resilience for being truly autonomous (yes, autonomy is a muscle that needs to be strengthened!).

You realize that dependence on the external has its advantages and that it comes with a cost. While it can be intimidating to tune out other people’s opinions, culture, society’s expectations and so on, it can also be incredibly rewarding to remind yourself of your own sense of right and wrong, your innate feeling of what you want, and your deepest core values.

Level 2 can be tricky, because it’s here that we start to encounter our own mindsets, biases and assumptions at a level deeper than their superficial presentation. We realize that we, like everyone else, possess a reality filter. We don’t encounter reality, but reality as it appears after it’s been pushed through this filter. The filter takes shape according to our past experiences, family history, cultural environment, religion, education, the historical period we live in, and class… .

We all take in the same data, but we come to different interpretations of what that data means because of our different perspectives. The question at level 2 is, are the filters working for you? What do you want the filters to be? Can you live without filters at all…?

Level 3 - Truly independent thought. Follow that line of reasoning long enough, and you start to understand something important - choice. As an individual, you can choose what material you take in, choose how you respond to it, and choose what you wish to create and put out into the world. And in that act of choosing, you express and experience your own perspective, desires, and will. When you choose, you self-create. When you allow others to choose for you, then they create you.

When we are independent thinkers, we have our own weight and gravity, and stand strong in ourselves, regardless of what others are doing or thinking. We are tuned into our inner compass, values, and selfhood. We look within and evaluate actions and ideas according to our own criteria, and not criteria we’ve borrowed from others or had foisted on us when too young to realize. We are free, and we are consciously participating in our life rather than passively receiving it, pre-digested by others.

We take responsibility for our worldview and perspective (yes – it’s our responsibility to know and maintain the state of being we choose) and engage with the external world with an unshakeable sense of our own dignity and value. We are comfortable testing our own assumptions and the assumptions of others. We don’t just think but reflect on our thinking (i.e., metacognition), and we realize that we always have the power to choose our behaviors, thoughts and beliefs.

We try to understand things from the inside out rather than happily believing everything we’re told. We are no longer an echo of someone else’s values or actions or perspectives, but our own original voice. Sounds great, right? “Think for yourself” is something people say, but it is an incredibly difficult thing to do. The world is filled with readymade opinions, untested assumptions, unintelligent biases, lazy thinking, denial, escapism, imitation, and unchecked ego.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you had a truly independent thought? Something that your own mind generated, and which didn’t come directly from more forceful personalities and ideologies around you? The conventional, unadventurous thinker goes out into the world and asks, “what are the rules of the game here? What am I supposed to be doing?" In this way, he passively asks for the external world to tell him what to value, focus on, feel, and want.

The independent thinker goes out into the same world and instead asks, “what can I create here? What’s happening, and how can I learn more about it? What could potentially be? What do I want to do?" There is only one way to think and be for conventional thinkers, and they figure that out by looking outside themselves - other people’s opinions, culture, politics, whatever.

But to think independently, you need to turn within and generate your own original response, your own authentic perspective and your own view on life. This is infinitely more valuable than anything you’ve simply been told, because you value yourself, and you trust what you know, and what you’re capable of. It's a guarantee that almost all the content you encounter out there in the world is, essentially, telling you what to do, think, feel, or focus on.

News headlines, social media noise, junk on the T. V., advertising pasted on every square inch of your life, peer pressure, endless political squabbling... You just drift along and go with it without your own independent thought. But the next time you see a talking head on a pixelated screen, realize that you have a choice. You can become conscious in that moment and ask yourself, “this is what this person is creating. That’s them. But what do I think?

What do I want to create?" Independent is not the Same as Contrarian. When I was a teenager and just becoming aware of the possibility of independent thinking, I got into the habit of mistaking cynicism and distrust for critical thinking.

I had correctly learnt that the media often lied, and so every time someone mentioned a news article, I would say something like, “come on, you don’t honestly believe everything you read, right?" This annoying habit had come from the unconscious belief that if I wanted to stand apart and be independent, all I had to do was push against the popular opinion.

I would never have admitted it at the time, but I assumed that intelligent, switched-on people were necessarily argumentative and oppositional. However, I was a contrarian, and not a truly independent thinker. What’s the difference? The clue is in the name - a contrarian is contrary to, or against something. You know the bratty two-year-old who will tell you the sky isn’t blue just because you said it is?

This is the position that has, as its essence, the fact that it’s not some other position, but that’s all it is. It’s the “anti” position. However, an independent thinker forms their opinions and ideas from scratch, not merely in opposition. They do not care about what they disagree with or dislike. For them, critical thinking is not a competition with a winner or a loser. Something within them guides the formation of their opinions – their own experience, logic, reasoning, desires and values.

Sure, the outcome is often at odds with convention. But being at odds is not the goal. There’s usually a hearty dose of emotional bias, excitement, passion, or ego driving their resistance for a contrarian. For independent thinkers, though, the thought process is less flashy, more reason-driven, and, well, not as glamorous!

Meanwhile, for contrarians, the goal may be to bolster a certain ego-image, or it may be a deeply unconscious psychological need to dominate, to be heard, to stand out, or to protect against assumed attack. The focus and direction of such thinking is external – it pushes against other people and attempts to certainly affect other people. Some find them fun and interesting and creative and brave, while others find them annoying and get tangled in arguments with them.

But for independent thinkers, other people are… beside the point. The goal is to understand. To figure things out. What other people think? Largely irrelevant. Now, contrarians and independent thinkers often arrive at the same conclusions, but the question is why they end up there. They’ll often do the same actions (for example, “question everything”) but for very different reasons.

Often, a genuinely independent thinker will win the admiration of others, who then attempt to mimic that person (see level 1 above) and attach themselves to that worldview to be contrarian. But the independent thinker does not consider the popularity of his position as an indication of its value – he isn’t interested in fame, but he also doesn’t relish notoriety!

The Fundamentals Of Independent Thought. Let’s look at ways to develop autonomous, critical thinking in ourselves. Independent thinking is not a personality trait or fixed behaviors but a continually refined attitude expressed in habits.

Habit 1 - Critical reading. To practice and strengthen your ability to generate your own opinion, you need to take in information from various sources and engage with it. Passive reading merely absorbs the content with no individual response. But critical reading is where you practice passing the material through your filters, turn it over in your mind, and examine it on many levels.

There are two ways to read - Reading the words (i.e., comprehending the surface level meaning being conveyed), and. Reading beyond the words (i.e., not automatically assuming the words are a perfect and truthful representation of reality, and becoming curious about how and why the words have been written as they have).

For example, you may read a popular current events magazine piece about the dazzling new frontiers of cryptocurrencies and how tech empires are being built to reshape the digital world. If you are just reading the words, you merely try to comprehend and absorb the material as it’s given. You assume the excitement and optimism in the piece is natural and obvious, and the author’s opinion is an objective reflection that this topic is exciting.

At the end of the piece, you think what the author thinks. Or you could read the words, and also read what isn’t written - What is fact, and what is just presented as fact? What are the assumptions the author is making? In what ways is the reader being led, convicted or even manipulated? Why was this piece published and not literally any other piece? Who is this author, and what is their incentive – economically, psychologically or culturally?

Who benefits from you reading this article and going along with its premise? What is the evidence for the view being put forward? Independent of what the author thinks, what do you think about this topic? You could read to find out what other people’s opinions are so that you can have them too. Or you can read to gather information, analyze it, and use it to inform your own position.

It’s a mistake to think that “critical reading” means exposing yourself only to that material you already like and agree with. But an independent thinker is not threatened by low-quality or challenging information – because they trust their ability to appraise and evaluate whatever is in front of them.

Habit 2 - Not getting too fond of your own perspective. Don’t be the person who finds their position and then clings onto it forever after, no matter what. Humans have a natural bias for protecting and defending the opinions they already hold. They naturally seek information that confirms these opinions, and work hard to discount everything that directly challenges it. To be an independent thinker, you need to get into the habit of poking holes in these cherished opinions.

Now, this is not a cognitive or intellectual exercise. It’s a psychological one. Most people have ample brain power to see the plain truth. However, even ultra-intelligent people jeopardize themselves when allowing bias, ego and fear to control them. Getting too attached to your perspective means you don’t abandon it when you should – i.e., when confronted with ample evidence that something is rubbish.

Many people like to style themselves as smart philosopher types yet only seem to invoke their vast intellectual powers to reinforce sloppy beliefs and opinions they formed without a second thought. Be independent of other people’s opinions, but free yourself from the chains of your own outdated opinions, too. This takes two things - humility and curiosity. Thinking novel, original thoughts means we have to go outside our comfort zone.

The biggest threat to generating a truly unique and new idea is the assumption that you have the best idea already! Independent thinkers can think outside themselves and try different worldviews for size. They genuinely want to see the world through the eyes of people different from them. That means that they don’t engage others to argue or win them over but to actively expand their own understanding.

They don’t read new material, get into conversations about the idea that they need to defend themselves, or forcefully make their point until the other person recognizes them as the

winner! Habit 3 - Being O. K. With Being Disliked. Independent thinking means thinking that is not dependent. But, dependent on what? The thoughts, opinions, reactions or behavior of others. So, you think what you think even if other people don’t agree, don’t understand, or actively don’t like you because of it. It comes down to how you view the purpose of thinking - For conventional thinkers, an opinion or thought is an identity marker, or a stick to beat others with.

It’s something done to win other people’s approval or comply with norms and fashions. They engage at the superficial level, i.e., within the realm of other people’s thoughts about reality. For independent thinkers, the primary goal is always to learn, understand, and directly engage with reality. Therefore, having their thoughts and opinions disliked is not a problem. It’s far more satisfying to be respected than to be liked.

Being the same as people around you can outwardly make you feel safe and accepted. Isn’t it better to witness and appreciate the differences in one another and still respect them and cooperate, not in spite of differences, but because of them? Mature adults can disagree without it threatening their relationship or causing trouble. They also don’t expect everyone else to be identical to them as a condition of their friendship or affection. They enjoy and relish challenges and differences.

They like the friction and find it useful and generative. A group where everyone thinks the same is not experiencing true harmony and closeness; rather, they have all merely agreed to mimic one another in non-threatening ways. There is one big difference between the contrarian thinker and the independent one - the ego. For the former, the most important is the ego, and their way of thinking and being in the world is present to serve that.

Meanwhile, the most important thing is genuine insight, understanding, creativity, and mastery for the latter. If the selfish ego hinders that, then that ego is dropped, every time.

Habit 4 - Always staying curious. The ego wants to have all the answers, like a precious possession to be hoarded and guarded from others. Conventional thinkers prefer the feeling of being seen to be right than they do actually being right. One final habit that sets independent thinkers apart is their commitment to curiosity, instead of clinging to assumed “facts” and never questioning them. Genuinely questioning the world is a lot harder than it looks.

How many of us assume that if someone quotes a scientific paper in their argument, this is automatically sound and has to be accepted? How many of us see statistics and assume that it is correct – because numbers are more trustworthy than words, right? How many of us believe that if a Doctor of Philosophy expert in their field says something, it must be true? Well, this information may be true.

But if it is true, it’s not because it was in the right publication, or written by the right author, using the right terminology. It’s true because we could find enough sound evidence to support the fact. This is a subtle but major distinction. As independent thinkers, we question everything, including the ingrained and culturally sanctioned methods of questioning what others have taught us!

You are most at risk for sloppy and useless thinking when you are most blind to your own shortcuts, assumptions, prejudices or expectations. It’s great to challenge all the biases you’re already familiar with, but what about all those biases currently invisible to you? How are you going to uncover them? Independent thinkers are driven not by the desire to conform and win everyone’s approval, but they are also not reacting defiantly by being automatic rebels.

Instead, they care most about real, valuable ideas, thoughts they generate themselves, and using that power of thought to its maximum potential. Independent thinkers are driven by a passion far greater and more lasting than the compulsion to aggrandize the self – they want to improve in life, learn, grow, and bring illumination and understanding to the world in general. It’s a much bigger prize, isn’t it? What independent thinking actually looks like.

At this point, let’s clarify a few characteristics of the independent thinker - •They can gain awareness of their own thinking as thinking, and take conscious control over it rather than passively and unconsciously going along with others. •They trust their own perceptions, will, desires and interpretations and do not automatically privilege other people's over their own.

•They are comfortable going outside their comfort zone, and don’t mind admitting errors or being disliked for their positions. •They take in enormous amounts of information but actively engage with it, not just on a superficial level but also critically. •They know their cognitive biases, expectations, blind spots, and the ever-present ego and try to minimize any disturbance to their genuine understanding.

A conventional thinker occupies a mental model unconsciously, and the model they use may be something of someone else’s creation. An independent thinker knows many mental models, and owns their responsibility to choose which one to occupy, and for what reasons. This section will look at a few key historical figures who are broadly considered to embody the above characteristics.

These thinkers and theorists have demonstrated thoughts and opinions so genuinely novel and independent, that they always have changed the course of history or else drastically broadened the existing paradigm. But in reading about these people, we are not trying to answer the question, “how can I be more like them?" That is simply level 1 thinking! Instead, we want to see what we can learn from their experience, and understand what it says about our own.

You may wonder if independent thinkers are always philosophers and scientists. Independent thinking can manifest as the scientific method, but this is not all it is. Seeking evidence, establishing the truth through experiment and falsifiability, and using reason and logic are all used in the sciences, but they are more rightly a part of a broader approach to reality. You need not be a scientist to be an independent thinker!

As long as you are questing for deeper understanding and will consider your role in the equation, so to speak, then you are a critical and independent thinker. The people we’ll discuss below all liberally used analytical, logical, conscious, and reflexive mental models. These models gave them a richer and more lively perspective on reality than people who merely swallowed convention without a second thought. You could argue that independent thinking should just be called… thinking.

Everything else is a knee-jerk reaction, habit, ego, coping mechanism or piece of culture. Let’s see what we can learn from the independent thinking heavyweights.

Socrates – teaches us about challenging assumptions. Socrates was basically a one-trick pony. That trick? Asking questions. That’s it. Socrates wanted to understand. He wanted to dig dep, and when he thought he found an answer, he questioned that. He knew that correctly honed mental faculties were humanity’s saving grace, and he took it as his mission to use dialogue, logic and reason to uncover the truth. Besides Socrates’ philosophy, he was known for what’s now called Socratic dialogue.

Reality is revealed to us when we engage with our ignorance. In curiosity, we ask questions, and keep on asking them. We question even our questions, and our means of interpreting the answers. We start from the bare bones, assume nothing, and take small logical steps to discover what we absolutely can know. Socrates would demonstrate this dialectic to uncover hidden assumptions in a literal conversation. Step by step, the Truth is revealed.

In classical Socratic dialogues, two people discuss higher concepts like virtue, the nature of knowledge, and art. But we can use a similar approach to uncover assumptions in our everyday lives.

We can ask questions such as - “What do I mean by X. Y. Z. ?" (what assumptions have I made about definitions?) “What is my evidence for thinking this?" (do I have any reason to believe it?) “What do I know here?" (and what am I simply guessing?) “What am I (or you) not seeing?" (I may have made an error by omission) Getting a handle on your own assumptions means being willing to think from scratch. Consider even what you think is obvious and ask, is it really that obvious? Is it a given?

You might ask yourself a series of the above questions five times in a row to get to the root of your deepest held assumptions. This process might not illuminate the truth, but it will show you more clearly any impediments to seeing that truth! “I think I’ve got cancer." Is that so? “Well, I’ve got this weird lump, and I know what that means… cancer!" Does a lump always mean you have cancer? “Well, I don’t know. But I’ve read that it’s a big warning sign."

Is what you read absolute proof that you have cancer right now? “Well, no, obviously not. But I could." What is the evidence? “There’s no evidence exactly…” So, what do you really know? “Uh. I guess the only thing I really know is that I have a lump."

Niall Ferguson – teaches us the power of counterfactual thinking. Famously a historian who wrote about alternative history (specifically, what life would have been like if Germany had won World War I. I. ), author Niall Ferguson was a master of using the all-powerful phrase, what if? Counterfactual thinking is an out-the-box approach that is intrinsically innovative and creative. Every independent thinker must be familiar with the process of seeing what is… and being curious about what isn’t.

For example, in business, you could use counterfactual thinking to look at past failures and imagine how things could have played out differently, thus devising an improved strategy that prevents those mistakes in future. If you’ve asked a question and gotten a puzzling answer, it’s counterfactual thinking that helps you imagine what the right question would look like. This thinking style is a little strange and unfamiliar to those used to working only with what’s right in front of them.

Still, for those natural inventors and creatives of the world, thinking about what could be is as important as thinking about what is. When you ask what if, you step out of your comfort zone, drop all assumptions and pet theories, and take a leap into the possible, potential, and theoretical. This is where novel solutions are found, new ideas are explored, and fresh views are taken on old situations.

In a way, Socrates was also a counterfactual thinker in the sense that he repeatedly asked, “what if everything I think I know is actually wrong? What then?"

Friedrich Nietzsche – teaches us about perspective. Nietzsche was a philosopher who knew how much ego stood in the way of understanding, and he made liberal use of teasing, criticism and humor to poke holes in the prevailing yet unexamined ideologies of the time.

Rather than being a nihilist, Nietzsche was instead keenly aware of the fact that every person inhabits a particularly conditioned perspective, informed by where they’re born, when, how they’re educated, who their parents are and what their culture teaches them. Unaware of their impact, we are slaves to these influences. But if we become aware of our circumstances, we give ourselves choice.

We master ourselves and the world at large, and become the creators of our experience rather than at its mercy. Nietzsche believed that one way to get outside of these perspectives was to liberally try on as many as possible, and genuinely see the world through other people’s lenses.

Nietzsche said, “There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be." Thus, all there is in the world for us as human beings are different subjective perspectives of that world.

But if we can appreciate as many perspectives as possible, we gain a richer and more intelligent view of that world. For Nietzsche, there are no facts, only interpretations, and every person adopts their worldview and mental models to serve their needs. Our egoism is merely a narrowing of perspective; to free ourselves as much as possible, we need to widen that perspective and mix it up.

One great way to do this - find a point of view that is diametrically opposed to your own, and pretend it is your own. Make arguments for it. Imagine that, in its way, it makes complete and perfect sense. Genuinely engage with people who disagree with you – imagine that in doing so, you are accessing another aspect of the issue that you were previously blind to. Your world becomes bigger.

Summary - •Independent thinkers can think logically, clearly and autonomously, outside the pressures of their cultures, upbringings, past experiences or historical period. They are conscious and aware, rather than reactive and automatic, and can truly think (and experience) for themselves. •Cultivating independent thought takes time and effort. The first stage is to assemble a patchwork identity as an independent thinker, and mimic others we see around us.

The second stage is to gradually develop trust in our own perceptions and intellectual faculties, while occasionally deferring to convention. The final step is truly independent thought. This free, adventurous, creative, and proactive thought originates purely within us.

•The fundamentals of critical thought include learning to take in information (especially reading) critically, dropping the ego so that you don’t get stuck in any one perspective or opinion, having the bravery to be disliked for being different, and maintaining an open and receptive rather than closed mind. Conventional thinkers differ from independent thinkers in their approach to reality itself, and how they see the function of thinking. For the former, it’s to bolster the ego.

For the latter, it’s for the thrill of encountering reality directly. •Independent thinking is a way of being that can be practiced and nurtured. We do this by cultivating awareness, dropping ego, and learning to engage critically with the information we take in. This is not the same thing as being a contrarian, who goes against the grain merely to rebel. •Many famous independent thinkers throughout history shed light on how we might develop the capacity in ourselves.

Socrates teaches us the power of asking questions and uncovering our assumptions by taking nothing for granted. Niall Ferguson teaches us about counterfactual thinking, and imagining answers to the question “what if?”, and Nietzsche teaches us the value of perspective-switching to enrich our perception of the world. This has been The Independent Thinker Written by Patrick King Narrated by Russell Newton.