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“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.” — Hannah Arendt
When was the last time you sat down and did some serious thinking? What do you think when you think about dangerous thoughts? What is a dangerous thought to you?
Most of us would say that dangerous thoughts are thoughts that may lead to damage to the individual or society as a whole. And I would agree but some kind of damage is desirable.
Let me explain.
By damage, I don’t mean physical destruction. The damage I’m talking about is the damage to the mental prison cell society and culture have conditioned each of us into.
To be the protagonist of you’re prisonbreak, you have to think dangerous thoughts.
Entertain the thoughts a “sane” person wouldn’t dare to. And yet if this whole world we live in is insane isn’t it more insane to be sane? Likewise, is some degree of insanity not the most rational response to a world that sane-itizes insanity?
This is often a theme in darker Hero type journeys. One outstanding example is the movie Fight Club. Here the protagonist descends (or rather ascends) into what society would consider insanity to emerge into true sanity.
What this implies is that to truly become sane, you have to first become insane. Just to make sure, I’m not suggesting that you become a complete looney and end up in a mental institution. That would serve no one.
The insanity we’re talking about here is thinking for yourself type of insanity. It simply means thinking thoughts that we usually don’t consider because they’re too far out or too silly or too irrational or too contrary to our cherished beliefs.
You have to dare to question everything anyone has ever taught you about how things are supposed to be and how you should live your life. You have to see how deep the tendrils of mental conditioning truly run (Hint: they run pretty deep).
What Exactly Are Dangerous Thoughts?
“All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.” — Oscar Wilde
So far everything might’ve sounded fairly vague to you and you’re probably wondering what these dangerous thoughts are I’m talking about.
Fair enough.
I don’t want to leave you in the dry here but before I give you some juice let me say that the most dangerous thoughts for you are the ones you arrive at yourself by thinking for yourself. This is important to know.
No one else can think dangerous thoughts for you. You have to think for yourself and do your own math. Keep this in mind when reading the following examples.
Here are some of the questions I have asked myself over the years:
“Do I really exist?” “How do I know?” “Is there an I anywhere?”
“How can I know anything?”
“What is really going on here?”
“What if everyone has unknowingly lied to me about everything?”
“Does lasting happiness really exist?”
“What is it I truly desire?”
“Is love just attachment?” “Is love real?” “Have I ever truly loved someone?”
“What if there is no meaning and purpose to life?”
“What is true without a doubt?”
As you can see, all these questions are tied to deep-seated beliefs and desires. They question the basis of everything I think I want in life. They open the door to answers I might not like hearing. But more accurately, they open the door to even more precise questions.
The right question cuts through self-deception and delusion like a laser-cutter through butter.
Again, it won’t serve you to copy my process question for question because the questions I have asked have emerged from my living context. So, it’s best to start from where you are.
But a good question you can always ask to cut through butter is, “Is it true?”
And then you look with focus and see if it is true. Keep on peeling the layers and eventually, you’ll arrive at something that is true. But the one who arrives might not be the same who has started the journey.
A Bucket Full of Crabs
“Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.” — Aldous Huxley
When you start thinking vertical to the mainstream, you’ll quickly see that you’re a crab in a bucket full of crabs. As soon as you try to escape, the other crabs will start pulling you back down into the bucket.
Everything around you wants you to be complacent with the status quo. Everyone wants to wrap you into cotton and touch you with velvet gloves so that you and them can’t hurt you.
As children, we have constantly asked ‘Why?’ But no one could give us straight answers. Why? Because no one knows why.
Instead of admitting that they don’t know, teachers scolded you for asking such “stupid” questions. And your parents dismissed your inquiry as a childish curiosity.
But your questions were not stupid, nor was your inquiry mere childish curiosity. You were asking the real questions. You were pointing at the elephant in the room and wondering why no one was saying anything.
Or you might have noticed how most of us just love to complain about God, the world, and everything else we might encounter. Sometimes the object of our complaints does not even bother us that much. It’s the complaining itself that gets us going.
And when you decide to stop complaining because you recognize that it doesn’t get you anywhere, everyone around you wants to pull you back in. That’s the moment you realize that a big part of human conversations is about complaining.
The momentum towards complaining is so strong that you’ll feel it pulling you back. Give it a shot. Ditch the habit of complaining and see for yourself.
What Dangerous Thoughts Are About
“They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them.” — Charles Bukowski
Thinking dangerous thoughts is about going to the places where it hurts the most. Thinking dangerous thoughts is about taking a step back from the world and caring about your own freedom first and foremost.
The world will tell you to care more about the world and other people than about yourself. It will tell you that if you don’t put yourself second to the “collective” you’re a selfish narcissistic prick. But we should ask ourselves some questions here.
What is your service to the world worth when you are suffering? Is the greatest service to the world not your own inner peace and freedom?
Besides, does it really seem to you that the world wants to be saved?
Perhaps the greatest service you can render at this point is saving yourself. Imagine the difference in impact you make in the world when you’re internally peaceful in contrast to when you’re full of inner violence.
And here is something else to consider: You can focus on your liberation and still be nice and kind and gentle to others.
What then is the problem?
The world doesn’t want you to be free because free people can’t be manipulated, conditioned, and indoctrinated, and hence are dangerous to the way things are.
Being free in this context has nothing to do with physical freedom. It’s psycho-spiritual freedom.
Freedom to think whatever you want to think without a mental representation of society or your environment or your mother standing above you with a club ready to strike your every thought. But also being free from the mind, recognizing the mind’s nature, and hence not having to jump on the bandwagon of thought.
One dangerous thought can initiate the process of becoming a dangerous person.
Don’t Worry, Dangerous Thoughts Destroy Society Only a Little
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” — Shakespeare
Society won’t like it because it likes its sheep all obedient in herd formation. And just to make sure, I’m not bashing or blaming society here because who’s there to blame?
Society is not a real entity but more an energetic structure that has gained its own momentum. No one is controlling society, society is controlling us.
And yet it doesn’t have any malicious intent because that would be like saying a tsunami has malicious intent. Society is more like a force of nature than a human entity. It’s growing and evolving without anyone controlling it.
In fact, questioning the existence of society and what society actually means might be a fun past-time. Just saying.
Anyway, this is not about getting away from society because let’s be honest who’s going to leave everything behind to live by themselves in a mountain cave? I know, I won’t. At least not at this point.
Nor am I saying that society is bad. After all, we all enjoy its benefits and comforts in our daily life, so blaming society as the bad guy is not the solution. But freeing our thinking from societal influence, that’s where we can start.
Again, thinking dangerous thoughts is about questioning and reevaluating everything that’s been sold to us as the truth aka “that’s just how things are.”
But in reality, things are not. It’s the mind that creates things and assigns them meaning and importance. And you haven’t been born as a mind. The mind is a social product. It’s cultivated on top of you.
So, if the mind is nothing but a social product, how much of the things we see in life are really what they are?
The Examined Life
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates
Whether you agree with Socrates’ words or not is unimportant here. For our purpose, examining your life simply means bringing awareness to all areas and aspects of your life. Look at everything in your life—thoughts, emotions, beliefs, values, behaviors—and smash it with the savage rock called “Is it true?”
Questioning everything by asking if it is true is not supposed to throw you into a Decartesian hole where you know nothing for sure except that you exist, which, if we are completely honest, is true.
On the contrary, it’s supposed to bring you in touch with your own inner authority.
Dangerous thoughts enable you to become your own authority and start living a life of your own. You’ll no longer crave approval from others and you’ll no longer be tied to their worldviews. Your life will no longer be controlled by ‘have to’s’ and ‘must’s’ and ‘should’s’ and ‘cannot’s’.
In short, you’ll be a completely self-affirmative individual. You’ll trust yourself and life, and be your own biggest fan.
Sure, this might alienate you from some people and activities you have previously enjoyed. This is because everything inauthentic will start dropping away. You’ll no longer have interest in the things you used to escape your suffering because there will be no more suffering to escape from.
But, still, your overall enjoyment of life will skyrocket because you’ll start enjoying everything life has to offer on a non-clinging basis.
This is your natural birthright and it all starts with embracing a few dangerous thoughts.
Luka
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