To the deep thinkers,
Welcome to the Deep Thinkers Newsletter: A collection of essays dedicated to going beyond the surface.
If you’re new here, check out the Deep Thinkers archive.
I grew up in a religious household. My mom is a devout Christian, and when my sister and I were kids, she would drag us to church multiple times a week.
Despite my mom’s best efforts, I eventually walked down a path away from the church. Still, fear of her wrath kept me from outwardly questioning Christianity. Fear of burning in hell also did the trick. But something changed when I was 16. I asked my mom why I had to go to church.
She shot back, “Because I said so.”
This was an unacceptable answer. I told her I didn’t want to go to church anymore. She could hand out whatever punishment she wanted, but I’d made my decision.
Our relationship changed after this, and it took years to repair the chasm between us. But I know now that my decision was the right one. I’d grown tired of being told to do something without grounded justification.
This was the beginning of my fight to become a freethinker.
Programming
“If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Our world is not built to accommodate freethinkers. We learn early on that conformity is the path to social survival. Being a freethinker as an adult comes with its own set of challenges, but trying to be one as a kid is nearly impossible.
As kids, we hold very little agency. We depend on the adults in our lives to nurture and care for us. We come into this world innately curious. Everything is novel to us because we haven’t stacked up enough experience points yet. We’re curious about the why of it all.
Unfortunately, for many of us, our curiosity isn’t nurtured the way it should be. We question the adults in our lives and receive unsatisfactory answers like, “Because I said so.”
Our curiosity is stifled early and to ask too many questions feels taboo. So, instead of developing our own belief systems we blindly adopt the beliefs we’re handed or look to our peers to fill in the gaps of our understanding.
The result is a world full of people who can’t form their own original thoughts or opinions—people who only know conformity and have no idea how to find answers for themselves. They instead rely on culture and society to spoon feed them the answers.
As French-American essayist Anaïs Nin once wrote, “When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”
It’s no wonder so many of us grow up and feel lost once we venture out into the world. We weren’t allowed to fill our own map of reality based on beliefs that aligned with our truest selves. We are instead forced to accept and use the maps that were handed to us.
But if you want to break free from society’s programming, if you want to live a life aligned with your inner truth, you must learn to think for yourself. You must construct your own map of reality based on your questions and your own experiences.
Bound spirits
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, bound spirits are those who blindly accept everything their culture tells them. They don’t consciously live for themselves or what they believe in. They don’t question why things are the way they are; they simply accept what they’re told.
Bound spirits are just trying to survive and they know that survival comes through conformity. But being a bound spirit comes at a great cost. When you choose to blindly follow the herd, you give up more of your agency and stray further from your truth.
Challenging the status quo is indeed scary. But if freedom and self-actualization are what you’re after, then there is no other way. You must be free to think for yourself, to inquire and push against what others want you to passively accept.
Challenge the tyrants. Push against those who don’t want you to question why we do what we do.
From an early age, we’re taught to obey authority figures. If someone was in charge, wearing a uniform, flashing a badge, or was merely an adult, then what they said was law.
But what about the authority figures who abuse their power? Or those who use their position to spread lies and sow discord? Or those who are ignorant and use their position to spread what they “know” unchallenged?
As kids, we couldn’t do much but accept our fate. Those who challenged tyrannical authority figures were labeled as a troublemaker or a problem child.
But if everyone submits, who will be left to challenge the tyrants of the world?
Becoming a freethinker doesn’t happen by accident. Remember, our society isn’t set up to encourage people to think for themselves. Operating in opposition to what society wants from you takes courage. It takes guts.
To be a freethinker you must…
Observe your actions. Most of what we do on a given day is done unconsciously. Many people couldn’t tell you why they do what they do. Become aware of your habits. Be present as often as possible so that you can pick up on your own unconscious behaviors.
Escape the herd. The herd can’t give you what your spirit needs, so detach yourself from groupthink. Become comfortable with expressing your unpopular beliefs and opinions. And just as importantly, be ready and willing to challenge the values that the herd tries to impose on you.
Question your beliefs. Begin from ground zero. Strip away the beliefs that no longer serve you, the ones that have been forced upon you. Some adopted beliefs might still resonate, but many others might not. Build a belief system based on your own line of questioning and your own lived experiences—only then can you feel confident in what you stand for.
Question authority. We question authority, not to be rebellious or difficult, but out of curiosity for why something is the way it is or why certain rules exist. Any authority figure that can’t be questioned is a problem. As Henry David Thoreau once declared, “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.”
Your connection to the truth
To think independently, is your key. It’s the direct line to the truth. This direct line is where confidence in your knowledge and self-reliance in your own abilities to walk through the world come from.
Fill in your personal map of reality by questioning everything. Be an inquirer rather than a follower—no matter the status of the people around you.
Being a free thinker takes intention, clarity, and the willingness to suffer.
Reject conformity. Become a free spirit, one capable of thinking for themselves and coming up with their own answers. Your direct connection to the truth—to reality—is all you should care about.
Because if you rely on others to give you the answers to walking your path, then you never truly have that connection at all.
What stood out to me this week:
On heroes:
“Nothing you do is small. We can all be heroes. You may not win a grammy. You may not earn millions.
That’s not the point.
A hero doesn’t just win so others can watch them win.
A hero is someone who voluntarily picks up the heaviest thing in their lives and walks with it.
A hero is someone who can look at themselves and struggle all the way towards their goal.
A hero is willing to fight for something bigger than themselves.”
-Jamal Gharib II, Do Flowers Bloom on Rosecrans?
On first drafts:
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft — you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft — you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.”
🎵Song of the week:
Thank you for your time—feel free to let me know how this post resonated with you or share it with a friend.
And as always,
-Stay blessed.
I had a similar upbringing, rooted in religion with tension to be the rebel against preconceived norms and ideas. The initial years of my adulthood were focused so much on repairing the ruptures in my relationship with my parents. This piece makes me feel heard, now as a freethinker and someone that understands ‘why’ people conform (because it’s generally more than “bc someone said so”)
I devised a metaphor on this same sentiment, would encourage you to have a read if you have time: https://loafofthought.substack.com/i/76480871/the-human-hard-drive
Truth seeking is often a lonely journey. We don't get the validations or confirmations from the ones we seek.
But, life's not just life without this. And either we do it willingly or life has it's ways to throw this upon us, sometimes through inspiration, sometimes through tragedy.
Great piece man! Keep writing