Thinking for Oneself

It has long puzzled me how someone might be able to think for themselves without thinking by themselves. Thinking is a product of education. The values that parents transfer to their children, or the information that teachers convey to their students, to give two examples, are social processes. Thinking is social.

Thinking for oneself is not cognitive solitude. What, then, is the path of the critical thinker? Independent thought is found in this: encountering contradictory pieces of information, evaluating it, and attaching oneself to those particular pieces of information that appear most credible—even when that information is at odds with the beliefs of someone (or some people) that the critical thinker has strong relational ties to.

A paradox emerges: thinking is social, yet the pursuit of truth can threaten social cohesion.

There are multiple motivations for holding different beliefs than others. Thinking differently than those around you may be done out of courage. But it may just as well be done out of a superficial arrogance that is self-congratulatory or delights in receiving attention from others.

What makes critical thinking worthwhile? It has already been written that it can threaten social cohesion. Is it wrong if that occurs? Perhaps critical thinking is not valuable in itself. Based on the definition provided in paragraph two, truth is not guaranteed, even though it is aimed at. The critical thinker is interested in what appears most credible, and this would not filter out false judgements entirely.

Critical thinking seems to be important because nobody is infallible. It is the individual pursuit of truth when the social process fails. The social nature of thinking is good, and we do not want to resort to Hobbesian conflict. But when an individual is surrounded by others who possess falsity on a certain point, he is only left with the option of pursuing the truth alone.

Critical thinking might not vouchsafe truth or certainty, but it intends to get as close to correctness as possible.

A Double Dactyl for Taylor Swift

Higgledy piggledy
Taylor Alison Swift
Tortured poets bureau?
How humorous!

Ginsberg and Bukowski
Epiphenomenon
Such offensive jingles
are ruinous!

Metaphysics and Bad Writing

Metaphysics is the syntax of reality. Its propensity to investigate things at the most basic level helps one set unorganized information into order. With the tools necessary to arrange different pieces of data into a coherent picture, metaphysics has practical consequences for producing a unified personality and understanding of the world.

It is a shame, then, that its literature should be encumbered by words like "mereological" and "nomological." While many of an analytic spirit may delight in such technicalities, it is worth remembering that technical language serves a pragmatic purpose, which is to compact large amounts of information. Technical words ought to be the matryoshka dolls of writing, nesting layers of meaning into a single world. But rarely do these words appear as beautiful works of culture. They are ugly and pretentious. Such words look bad in print. They are to manners as a spoonful of cinnamon is to good taste—a pinch will suffice!

There is a world of a difference between efficiency and intellectual self-congratulation, and unfortunately, the use of many technical terms falls into the latter category.

Yours for Mine - Call Me Distant

Some artists and songs have more memories attached to them than others. One of those bands for me is Yours for Mine, an indie rock/post-hardcore outfit that released their debut full-length, Dear Children, on Blood and Ink Records in 2008.

My first memory of Yours for Mine is seeing their CD at a local Christian bookstore, Scott's Parable (which has since relocated and been rebranded as Kennedy's Parable) around the time their album was released. I would have probably been in grade nine.

I did not begin listening to Yours for Mine until I graduated high school, however. What motivated this was that Blood and Ink Records had everything available for free on Bandcamp around Christmastime in 2012. Not only was that the year I graduated high school, as 2012 also marked my first year away from home, in which I packed my bags for Thetis Island, BC to attend a programme at Capernwray Harbour Bible School that lasted from September 2012 to April 2013.

Christmas of 2012 was pretty awesome. In addition to being reunited with family and friends after a few months of separation, my parents spoiled me with a 160 GB silver iPod Classic. (In fact, I have the replacement sitting beside me as I type this. One of my roommates from bible school tinkered with the original and unintentionally caused it to malfunction, due to my leaving it behind in our cabin on spring break, when I left for Seattle, hence the replacement.) I loved music back then, perhaps more than I even do now, as I did not take a liking to books at that time in my life.

Returning to the topic of this post, Yours for Mine, I remember including "Absence in Elegance" in a playlist I made for a yearbook committee meeting at Capernwray. That jazzy outro! Dear Children is also the album I listened to when I hopped aboard the wrong bus after a psychology lecture as a first-year student at the University of Saskatchewan in 2014. I probably spent an hour and a half on the bus, instead of the usual half an hour. In 2019, Yours for Mine also made it onto a couple of monthly playlists I created in Windows Media Player with their tracks "The Angry End" and "My Tomorrow."

And here I am, in 2024, still getting this band's music stuck in my head. The singing on Dear Children can be rather pitchy, but there is something captivating about Yours for Mine that encourages me to look beyond that part of their music. "Call Me Distant," the song I have decided to share here, takes inspiration from 1 John 2:12.

Structural Functionalism and Scripture

A paragraph from Sociology Through the Eyes of Faith by David A. Fraser and Tony Campolo:

In this tradition [structural functionalism], inequality is natural. People are born with innate differences in gifts, motivation, and capabilities. This shows up in variations in social worth. Because humans are by nature inclined to disorder, strong social bonds are essential. The nature of society is that of interdependent institutions with a supportive set of norms and values that bind people together into a cohesive whole. The most common metaphors for this vision of society are those of the living organism and the system. In either case, the images stress the unity of the social whole and the self-correcting functioning of the social organism when its parts properly interrelate. A stable but dynamic equilibrium is created when every part or element contributes to the survival and health on the whole.¹

George Ritzer associates structural functionalism with consensus theories, which "see shared norms and values as fundamental to society, focus on social order based on tacit agreements, and view social change as occurring in a slow and orderly fashion."²

James Farganis writes the following about structural functionalism:

Rules and regulations are understood, by the functionalist, as codes and enactments designed to benefit the totality rather than the expressions of a dominant class or particular interest with privileged access to decision-making power. Functionalism in this respect is set apart from Marxian explanations of social order, in which coercion is seen as the ultimate reason people obey rules and abide by codes and laws.³

Certain passages in Scripture, in my estimation, square well with the ideas of structural functionalism.

Romans 12:4-8 not only speaks about inequality in terms of gifts, but uses the human body as a metaphor for the Church:

For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Similar to how structural functionalism suggests that humans have a proclivity for disorder, Ephesians 2:3 describes humans as being "children of wrath" by nature.

1 Corinthians 1:10-12 also affirms that it is important for Christians to have shared norms and values: "Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose." As this summary by BibleProject notes, the book addresses issues of "sexual misconduct, confusion about food and worship practices, and controversy surrounding Jesus’ resurrection."

Notes

1. David A. Fraser and Tony Campolo, Sociology Through the Eyes of Faith (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 112.

2. George Ritzer, Sociological Theory (8^th edition, New York: McGraw Hill, 2011), 236.

3. James Farganis, Readings in Social Theory: The Classic Tradition to Post-Modernism (6^th edition, New York: McGraw Hill, 2011), 157.