It Hurts to Think for Yourself
In a world of performative conformity
I recently stumbled upon an “almost-great” line, as deemed by a Financial Times columnist, that I can’t seem to shake off. The columnist quotes Chris Williamson, a prominent figure in the intellectual podcasting scene:
“If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.”
The Times man’s hesitation to fully endorse this “almost great” quote, perhaps due to its origin from a pod bro rather than a more traditionally “credible” source, adds an interesting twist. But its truth is as inevitable as influencers promoting detox teas.
The phenomenon Williamson describes, which
terms as “package-deal ethics” and we might call “monothinking,” is endemic in today’s polarized political landscape.It’s a mindset that leads people to adopt a set of beliefs as a bundled software package rather than critically examining each issue on its own merits.
The columnist elaborates on this point, noting how easy it is to anticipate someone’s opinions on a wide range of issues based on their stance on a single matter:
“From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software.”
The appeal is understandable and multifaceted: I know what I believe because I know what my friends believe, and we believe in opposition to our enemies. Such a person avoids a lot of loneliness, intellectual or otherwise.
In a world defined by cognitive dissonance, these software packages soothe the boiling undercurrents of our complex reality. Religions once fulfilled this role; but with the retreat of faith and the subsequent erosion of truth, it was always inevitable that such tribalistic theory-making would rear its ugly, simplistic head.
Monothinking is to demagogic tribalism what natural selection is to evolution—it’s the governing function. Spend any time online, and you’ll notice the nauseating repetition of ideas, images, and takes by influencers and friends alike. The sheer predictability of these viewpoints is so formulaic, it borders on the astonishing. Memesis, indeed.
The fundamental flaw of monothinking is its uncritical absorption of ideology and oversimplification of complex social issues. It requires the “thinker” to say things like, “But what really matters is ____” thereby easily dismissing all counter-evidence to the claim they’ve already decided to believe.
This is where the danger of monothinking rears its head: when we become so wedded to a single principle or ideology that we start to view every issue through that narrow lens, regardless of whether it truly fits.
When you elevate a single belief above all else, it becomes a slippery slope to justifying almost anything in its defense. Enter the breeding ground for extremism in its worst forms: terrorism and despotism, pogroms and jihad.
This approach is evident in milder forms across the political spectrum, with both the right and the left falling prey to its allure.
On the left, we too often see people attribute every societal ill—whether the war in the Middle East or even climate change—to the specter of “white colonialism,” which often fails to acknowledge the intricacy of historical and geopolitical factors at play in our modern world.
Alas, colonialism alone cannot explain the Houthis’ enslavement of nearly 500,000 people in Yemen, the displacement of over 3 million people in Sudan due to ongoing conflicts, or China's imprisonment of an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in internment camps. Turns out, people of all sorts of colors do bad things to each other—and to the planet.
The right, meanwhile, has its own perfidious blind spots. Here, we witness, in fact, monothinkers dismiss systemic racism, despite evidence to the contrary. Some Republicans decry viewing any problem through the lens of race, but when Black women are 3-4x more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, insisting on a colorblind analysis seems at best naïve and, at worst, negligent.
The allure of monothinking is rooted in the phenomenon of introjection, a concept from Gestalt therapy that describes our tendency to snugly adopt beliefs and values from our immediate social environment. It’s easier and safer to accept pre-packaged worldviews that provide certainty, and ensure our children are invited to all their classmates’ birthday parties.
Introjection, in this context, resembles a trauma response—an unwillingness to look at ourselves and do the hard work of formulating our own opinions. By outsourcing our beliefs to others, we numb the internal pain of uncertainty and the fear of standing alone. In so doing, we lose touch with ourselves and our reality. We risk starting wars.
The antidote to monothinking is the ability to hold paradox in place without revulsion or contempt, perhaps even with respect. Wisdom lies in navigating the tension between opposing ideas when each bears kernels of truth.
By holding this principle sacrosanct, we can inoculate ourselves against monothinking and maintain the intellectual agility needed to engage with an entropic universe. This is precisely the thrust of metamodernism, a philosophy I’ve long championed.
Capitalism serves as a perfect example of this kind of metamodern paradox. As its detractors insist, for sure, capitalism is colonizing and extractive, polluting and exploitative.
Yet it’s also why our life expectancy extends beyond 45, why we don’t wage war with our neighbors every five years, and why you’re reading this on a marvel of digital technology, likely in considerable comfort.
Can you hold both these truths?
Can you agree that neither truth eclipses the other?
For many today, it’s simply asking too much.
Read any text from the spiritual canon, across cultures and hemispheres. Peace rarely comes to those who only hold one idea, unless that idea is Love or Being.
“The antidote to monothinking is the ability to hold paradox in place without revulsion or contempt, perhaps even with respect. Wisdom lies in navigating the tension between opposing ideas when each bears kernels of truth.”
Loved this quote, Alex. Although I think nuance escapes the average person. Perhaps I have little faith in the average person though.
To me, this is a cascading effect of poor education across many generations. So many capable humans resenting or even becoming averse to education and learning out of spite from their experience in our one-size-fits-all institutionalized education system. It makes critical thought literally painful or at the very least very frustrating. We all avoid discomfort to our own detriment.
Enjoyable read though, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Major banger