AUTONOMOUS THINKING

Autonomous Thinking is thinking that empowers us to think for ourselves, to step out of the generally accepted patterns of thought all around us, and act for our own convictions. It is our power to think for ourselves that brings out our character and helps us to make informed decisions in different situations.

 

To be autonomous thinker we first have to go through the process of self discovery or self examination by answering the question “who am I” this discovery is meant to assist us to recognize what type of people we are and want to be and the means with which to achieve this. This is made possible when we personally sit and think for ourselves.

 

Autonomous thinking is important as it helps us make informed decisions. It is in very rare cases that we find ourselves in the same situation as other people. We might be in the same situation but the way we handle it is completely different. This is where autonomous thinking comes into application. In such a situation we should not let other people think for us as their thought pattern may be for their own benefit only. We should base our thoughts on what is best for us putting our priorities first because it is our thoughts that guide our actions. Therefore to avoid taking malicious actions we should think autonomously.

 

Many people are out to spread propaganda about various issues so as to achieve certain pre-determined goal. Propaganda is a situation where information is deliberately altered, manipulated or distorted by the source so as to achieve its own selfish goals. To prevent our actions from being influenced by propaganda we ought to think autonomously and through our thoughts determine the truth from masses of wrong information.

 
We ought to be autonomous thinkers so as not to be victims of prejudice. Prejudice is the act of judging something or a person without first carefully evaluating or rather getting to know the person or the thing much better and then make our conclusion then. Autonomous thinking enables us to go out and learn for ourselves rather than listen to what people think about someone, something or about an issue. It is then and only then do we decide if we like or don’t like that person or that thing.

 

It is our thoughts that influence our actions. If we allow other people to think for us then the actions that we take are not what we would do should we have thought autonomously. It is for this reason that we should think autonomously because for every action we take there are consequences or rather there are repercussions. When other people think for us and we take action based on their thought we are hit badly by the consequences which are mostly not pleasing. Therefore we should think for ourselves so as to avoid regrets and accept whatever consequences come our way as a result of how we think, the decisions we make and the actions we take.

 

When we fail to think autonomously we tend to be victims of authoritarianism where we place a higher value to views expressed by people in authority. People tend to fall for this because they fail to have confidence or faith in their own thinking. This is in other words to say that many people are intellectually lazy. It makes us accept things without question and fail to ask questions even when there is need to. This is a common phenomenon that politicians take advantage of to influence the masses of their followers. This can be taken to be one of the highest contributing factors to the violence that took place after the 2007 elections where people acted not out of their own peril but due to the influence of political leaders. We should therefore make use of autonomous thinking to avoid a repeat of such inhuman behavior.

In conclusion we can  say that the best way to be able to make decisions and take action is when  we maintain our ability to think for ourselves other than let other people who we don’t know what their motives are think for us. Although we should be autonomous thinkers it does not mean that we should not listen to other people’s views or comments, we should be able to maintain flexibility by having an open mind but only to good reasoning of which we were currently unaware of. We should have a kind of a mind filter to weigh the reasons that favor a certain thought pattern.

Autonomous thinking does not also mean that we should shun all other thoughts apart from our own but rather be open to new experiences, new ways of looking at things and different ways of doing things. This is because we are living in a world that is constantly changing and we need to be open minded to be able to keep up.