> At 10:21 AM -0500 28/12/03, Dennis Perrin wrote:
> I've known plenty of lefties
>
>> who've been fried to the gills with theory and ideology, and in many
>> cases
>> they were less free than the religious folk they dismiss or
>> condescend to.
>> Is this a perpetual rad posture, part of the Correct & Advanced Behavior
>> expected of the pwog tribe? Or is it simply another form of delusion?
>
> Therein lies the problem. Learning to think for yourself is apparently
> hard to do if you've been brought up in an environment of
> authoritarianism. So yes, thinking for yourself is likely to be an
> ongoing requirement for radicals.
Well, independent thought is certainly more _difficult_, but certainly not impossible; the best dissident literature has come out of periods and places of severe repression. And we admire it all the more for it.
One could also make the case that dissident thought is _more_ likely to turn up in an unjust or authoritarian environment. One is more acutely aware of repression, of the contradictions and lies and failures, and the little ironies of life that flow from them.
But it's sort of amusing to notice that, when there's comparatively little repression, we don't have as much respect for independent thought. I don't mean there's _contempt_ for it: it's just that it doesn't seem as heroic.