There Is No Such Thing As Thinking Well

Thinking is an overused word. Thinking is a daily act that we do with more or less success. Thinking stops where dogma or doxa begins. The problem of our time, and maybe it has always been the case, is the bien-pensance, that is to say a leaden cap that is put on our heads to prevent us from wandering off the beaten track. To think well consists in adhering ideologically to the dominant thought without deviating from the framework placed at our disposal. To think well is to not think at all, because to think is to undertake a reasoning from axioms and not from dogmas.

A certain so-called progressive catechism, most often coming from the American schools of sociology, forces us to think with blinders on. For fear of crossing a red line that would doom us to ostracism, we in turn turn become apostles of political correctness.

To think in the 21st century is to manage to emancipate oneself from the dominant ideological framework from which it is difficult to escape wherever one is. To think truly without political sensitivity is in itself impossible because human subjectivity can color our speeches, which is why the neutrality with which the representatives of right-thinking present themselves is questionable. Wrapping oneself in the mask of virtue and neutrality is the best trick one can use if one wishes to anaesthetize the critical eye of a population. So yes, let’s try to think, even the unthinkable, it is by pushing back all the barriers of obscurantism that we can acquire a true critical mind.

History is written by the victors, but the revenge on history is done by a victim dialectic that does not serve the victims. Also, history can be written by another camp, that of those who have won the ideological battle.