do we really think…

We live in an era saturated with branding, slogans, memes, pop iconography, subcultures, rampant pop media, fashion obsession, subcultures within subcultures within cultures, and a dominant worldview of citations, quotes, references – whether they be scientific, religious, literary, social, or even tribal.

Of late I’ve been thinking about what percentage of what we think is what WE ourselves actually think and what percentage of what we think is what others think?

I throw this out even though personally we may very strongly not think we think what others’ think influences us to think, say and do things?

… what do you think? … do we, or don’t we?

And what would it mean if we are offended at this thought or if our immediate response is that we haven’t really thought much about it?

freedom? …what would we do with it?

In this age of democracy and self-determination, independence and freedom of choice it is difficult, even un-PC to suggest that we have a staggering amount of freedom already – more than we could ever handle.

We live in a world that can make us as intelligent as we can possibly imagine.  Available to us is rampantly advancing technology that is so rapid in it’s advance that it is frightening.  At the same time it’s all well within our reach if we wanted to reach out for it.  There is almost nothing that we cannot have access to.

We have more books and more movies than we could ever view let alone study.  More information than we could possibly ever use in a hundred lifetimes.  We have access to incredible knowledge instantly at our fingertips.

We can also add freely to this staggering data base that is available.  Almost anyone can be an author, a journalist or even a film maker with instant access to publish new or even old ideas to the rest of the world at virtually no cost at all.

We have access to thousands of universities, tens of thousands of  TV channels and literally millions of websites with almost infinite bytes of information of every conceivable type.

We also have direct access to billions of humans across the earth from every country, tribe and tongue.

This is almost as much freedom as can be imagined and with all this access to all these things we have more potential now than ever before.

Yet in practical terms we cannot even use one millionth of what is already available to us right now, at this very second, even though it is virtually free and instantly easily accessible.

Yet amazingly we want more.  And we want more freedom to choose.  In fact, it’s as if we demand freedom.

Yet strangely, with all that is already available to us there seems always something we believe that is being denied us.

There seems always to be something else that we want, something else that we believe we need.

Not content with access to almost everything imaginable, we want more.

So here’s a question that plagues me:  If we got this freedom, all this freedom we so desperately desire, … what would we do with it?

decision making and the will of man

Of late I have been foraging for input around our freedom. I am still turning every stone I come across but up till now I seem to have only come up with some unexpectedly strange stuff lurking in the dark, shady cracks. Freedom of speech, freedom of choice and other related issues like self-determination, independence, autonomy and others are such key issues to many in these times we live. Wars have been fought over such and much blood has been spilled. Maybe I’m searching under the wrong rocks but I seem to be starting to think that perhaps we have not really been seeing the whole picture at all. It has surprised me as I have become aware of just how much emphasis I have placed on the ability, even the right and responsibility to make correct decisions. We live in a very cerebral age where control and accuracy is so important to us. Perhaps as a resistance to the impersonal, dehumanising age of the industrial revolution we have reacted and have somehow missed the plot? Do we really have the ability to think independently? Are we actually as autonomous as we would like to believe? Do we make our own decisions? Can we decide for ourselves? What do you think? or perhaps more to the point, what does your mother think? ·  ·  http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html