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Post-a-day - this one's perfect!
January 29th, 2025 12:56 pm29 – Curmudgeons' Day: What is a curmudgeon? Do you know any curmudgeons? What do you think of them? Today is also Freethinkers' Day. Do you think a curmudgeon might be just a freethinker?
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I am a curmudgeon. Loudly, proudly, and with great intention. A curmudgeon voices the doubts everyone else has, but won't say, the flaws everyone else sees but won't point out, and the idiocy everyone recognizes but is too intimidated to call out. That's me. I am always the curmudgeon in my work life, at least. To be fair, I am an old-school academic surrounded by School of Ed folks - it's inevitable!
I am also a freethinker (by certain lights), and no, I don't really see the two as interchangeable, particularly with how 'free thinker' is used nowadays. In the more common (more correct, perhaps?) use, 'free thinker' as I know the term means more or less the same as 'atheist' or at least 'actively questioning religion.' In a slightly broader sense, it can also mean, 'actively questioning the powers that be,' to whatever that may refer in context. In that sense, yes, definitely, I am a 'free thinker.'
However, too often, I see it used to excuse, justify, or gussy up otherwise unacceptable or unsupportable opinions. Anti-vaxxers, for example, consider themselves 'free thinkers,' though if there is anything that less exemplifies 'free thinking' than succumbing to mass panic over blatantly counterfactual nonsense, I can't think of it offhand.
People who are vaguely disreputable, disagreeable, irresponsible, or generally dissolute seem often to invoke 'free thinking' as their raison d'etre, in much the same way they do 'enlightened.' (The Buddha weeps, or he would if he existed.) The notion that somehow, someone's utter disregard for order, rules, or just common decency is the result of 'free thinking,' 'enlightenment,' 'thinking on a higher level' or some other Deepak Chopra gobbledegook and the rest of us are simply to dim to get it is precisely why I hesitate to claim either moniker.
Then again, what can you expect? I AM a curmudgeon, through and through.
___
I am a curmudgeon. Loudly, proudly, and with great intention. A curmudgeon voices the doubts everyone else has, but won't say, the flaws everyone else sees but won't point out, and the idiocy everyone recognizes but is too intimidated to call out. That's me. I am always the curmudgeon in my work life, at least. To be fair, I am an old-school academic surrounded by School of Ed folks - it's inevitable!
I am also a freethinker (by certain lights), and no, I don't really see the two as interchangeable, particularly with how 'free thinker' is used nowadays. In the more common (more correct, perhaps?) use, 'free thinker' as I know the term means more or less the same as 'atheist' or at least 'actively questioning religion.' In a slightly broader sense, it can also mean, 'actively questioning the powers that be,' to whatever that may refer in context. In that sense, yes, definitely, I am a 'free thinker.'
However, too often, I see it used to excuse, justify, or gussy up otherwise unacceptable or unsupportable opinions. Anti-vaxxers, for example, consider themselves 'free thinkers,' though if there is anything that less exemplifies 'free thinking' than succumbing to mass panic over blatantly counterfactual nonsense, I can't think of it offhand.
People who are vaguely disreputable, disagreeable, irresponsible, or generally dissolute seem often to invoke 'free thinking' as their raison d'etre, in much the same way they do 'enlightened.' (The Buddha weeps, or he would if he existed.) The notion that somehow, someone's utter disregard for order, rules, or just common decency is the result of 'free thinking,' 'enlightenment,' 'thinking on a higher level' or some other Deepak Chopra gobbledegook and the rest of us are simply to dim to get it is precisely why I hesitate to claim either moniker.
Then again, what can you expect? I AM a curmudgeon, through and through.