IS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO BELONG TO AN IDEOLOGICAL GROUP? OR IS IT ENOUGH TO LEARN TO THINK FOR YOURSELF?

…There, in the land of doubt, knowledge is born…

Ideas become dangerous when they start thinking for you. At that moment, you cease to be free and become a devotee. It doesn’t matter which faction you belong to: ideology—like faulty software—takes control, occupies your mind, rewrites your perception, and erases doubts. It’s convenient, yes, but it costs you the freedom to think.

Jordan Peterson, in his book Beyond Order , calls this trap by its name: ideology. Every ideology is born from a fragment of truth. Then it grows, swells, becomes a closed world. A partial truth that ends up devouring everything else. It’s rule number six in his book, but it could be rule number one of mental survival in our time.

Abandoning ideology doesn’t mean giving up on belief. It means starting to believe again with your own mind. It means abandoning the security of ready-made answers, the comfort of the group, the laziness of those who always have “the good” and “the bad” labeled by others.
Be careful: this isn’t an invitation to not have ideas, far from it. It’s an invitation to think them yourself, to question them, not to inherit them. Because freedom isn’t the absence of thought, but the ability to consciously choose it.

We live immersed in a reality that has replaced thought with alignment. Every idea must carry a label, every voice must belong to a camp. We listen not to understand, but to respond. We don’t argue, we react. Amid this din of slogans, those who try to think seem lost simply because they are free. And, as often happens, freedom is frightening.

The ideological mind works like a filter: it lets in what proves you right and discards the rest. But reality doesn’t let itself be filtered. It remains there, intact, off the screen, outside the hype. That’s where knowledge truly arises—at the point where certainties give way to questions.

Abandoning ideology is an act of intellectual rebellion. It’s choosing to observe instead of belonging. To ask “why” instead of shouting “against whom.” It’s a personal discipline, a silent training: thinking for yourself, even when it costs dearly, even when it leaves you without an audience.

Throughout history, those who dared to do so almost always paid a price. Socrates, condemned for teaching young people to doubt. Galileo, forced to contradict himself despite knowing he was right. Giordano Bruno, burned for imagining infinite worlds. Gandhi, Osho, and many other free spirits, each guilty of the same sin: thinking. And, worse still, teaching it.
Power can tolerate almost anything, but not a mind that reasons alone. That, sooner or later, becomes contagious.

You don’t have to agree with Peterson to grasp the power of this concept. A modicum of honesty is needed: those who don’t question themselves, give themselves up. And when ideas become idols, the mind turns into an altar.

Rule number six, but also the first of every internal revolution: abandon ideology. Not to stop believing, but to re-understand who you are, where you’re going, and whether what you do truly comes from you

Thinking alone isn’t isolation. It’s the very point where freedom begins.

Disclaimer: This article is not supported, funded, or promoted by any political party, association, or economic group. It is the fruit of free thought, developed through reading, observation, and personal reflection. The ideas expressed arise from a discussion of Jordan Peterson’s book Beyond Order and from an independent vision of reality, independent of ideologies or affiliations.

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