Thinking & Freedom

For any endeavor
To ensure competence
Study and training are required
Some sort of licensing, some certification
Or some sort of simple apprenticeship, at least…
But freethinking seems to be an exception;
Families, schools, religions, ideologies, cultures, nations
Teach us to think as they do, disallow independent thinking
And yet we all graduate as if we were highly trained thinkers
And believe our thoughts as if they were absolute truths…
And since we have all been reared
By some community, in some place, and at some time
We, then, have all been reared to reject freethinking
And in that lack of freedom to think independently
Lurk the seeds of our unending conflicts…
11.12.10