Yep, once again, today is Free Thinkers Day, when you can go into your favorite home furnishings store and get a little statue of a naked constipated man at no charge! While supplies last, of course.
Okay, the Walkabout Fact-checkers (stop giggling) are informing me that this is not at all the case, or even the meaning of the holiday, and that it’s actually Freethinkers Day, so now I have to do a 500-word essay as punishment. Why you have to be punished too, they haven’t said, but so be it.
This is admittedly not a widely-recognized holiday, which is quite unfortunate, because it really should be. This date was chosen because it’s the birthday of Thomas Paine, who was responsible for vocally promoting numerous doctrines and ideas that were uncommon in his time, among them the immorality of practicing slavery; The Freethought Society is recognizing those efforts in their events for the day. But he was also a major factor in the war of independence for what was to become the United States, and numerous other efforts to improve society then and afterward.
[An interesting aside here: Most sources give the purpose of the holiday as thinking for oneself and not falling for ‘groupthink,’ being open to new ideas and perspectives, but one also adds, “When we close our minds and think that our opinions are the only truth in this world, we stop ourselves from learning new things and being better versions of ourselves.” Paine’s own history, however, wasn’t exactly a demonstration of this – he was adamant and stubborn about his own views, not apparently open to debate nor always diplomatic about it, and while responsible for promoting some concepts that would later come to be approved, at the time he was often considered contrary and problematic. Hindsight is wonderful, but it can be argued that there’s a fine line between being adamant and being antagonistic, and it raises the question of how to know the difference between standing up for beneficial ideas or stubbornly clinging to flawed ones.]
Paine himself is often credited as having been an atheist, which has led to a lot of pushback against his ideas – too few can consider ideas themselves without slotting the originators into distinct ‘good’ or ‘bad’ categories; again, something that critical thinking can assist with. Paine was not an atheist at all, however, but he did consider any religions that he encountered to be woefully corrupt, and those that can’t fathom the difference are the ones that need to observe the day the most. And of course, that aspect has no bearing on anything else that he espoused, beneficial or not.
For us overall, however, it’s best to remain aware that what’s popular in the public sphere isn’t any indication of value or even rationality; we have routine conflicts between ‘fitting in’ socially, a useful survival trait from our past at least, and ideas or actions that are demonstrably better even though unembraced, which can lead to social awkwardness of varying degrees. And in today’s climate of targeting anyone not conforming to the cause of the day, it’s especially difficult, a challenge that far too many have chosen to avoid rather than risk ‘cancellation.’ But here’s the deal: if anyone knows some perspective, idea, or action that is demonstrably better, what value is it to avoid mention of it through fear of how people might react? Isn’t that mere selfishness?
And one final aspect that occurred to me recently, going back to cancel culture and the efforts to demonize so many people from our past. We should never expect, at any point in time, to have a perfect society, much less find a perfect person – but isn’t the recognition of the flaws from the past (as seen from our perspective now) evidence of how much we have been improving, rather than how much we should be ashamed?
Okay, that’s over 600 words – I’ve fulfilled my obligation to The Man. And while today is the holiday, in practice it should be every day.
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Some related links:
Tomorrow, let’s… keep on – Last year’s post on the holiday.