The Right to Think

Rebuilding Critical Minds in a Controlled World

There’s a quiet violence that rarely makes headlines, yet shapes our societies in profound ways. It’s called epistemicide.

Sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos defines epistemicide as the erasure or suppression of certain ways of knowing, thinking, and being. While it may sound like something relegated to dusty anthropology textbooks or histories of colonisation, its fingerprints are all over our modern world.

You can see epistemicide at work in banning books that challenge prevailing ideologies.
We see it in the stifling grip of authoritarian regimes and political movements that dictate what’s permissible to question. We can criticise and sanction Russia, but how dare we hold Israel to the same standard?
We see it in corporations (and increasingly public sector workplaces) where dissent or holding leadership to account is labelled as insubordination and can result in job loss. Heaven forfend if you see equality as something good, or ethics as something to be proud of.
Even in schools that are held up as beacons of good, the reward is for conformity over curiosity. Exams over expression. Draconian behaviour control over youthful self-expression.

When dominant cultures, institutions or authorities shut down alternative viewpoints, they’re not just controlling information, they are controlling imagination, and where imagination is curtailed, critical thinking cannot flourish.

This has profound implications, especially when we consider how people learn to lead themselves. If we leave education and personal development solely in the hands of formal institutions such as schools, religious establishments and workplaces, we risk outsourcing the very tools we need for individual autonomy. These systems, while sometimes useful, are often shaped by political, economic, or doctrinal agendas. They can teach compliance but rarely encourage dissent. They can teach facts, but not how to interrogate them.

So what can we do?

First, we must expand the definition of education. Real learning doesn’t begin and end in a classroom or Sunday service. It begins when we awaken to the idea that knowledge is everywhere. In books, yes, but also in conversations, in our experiences, in art, music, mistakes, and even conflict.

One of the most powerful acts of resistance to epistemicide is self-directed learning, the practice of choosing to educate oneself across multiple disciplines, cultures, and schools of thought. This requires curiosity, yes, but also courage. Because it often means reading authors your school never mentioned, questioning narratives your upbringing taught you to accept, and engaging with views you instinctively reject.

Critical thinking is the bedrock of this process. At its heart, critical thinking is not about being critical for the sake of argument—it’s about asking better questions. It means challenging your assumptions, distinguishing between evidence and opinion, and resisting the seduction of certainty. To think critically is to lead oneself. And to lead oneself is the first act of leadership.

So, how do we build these muscles?

Debating, both formal and informal, teaches us to understand positions we may not hold. It encourages listening and structured disagreement, rather than shouting matches or echo chambers.

Podcasting, whether listening or creating, is another modern tool for democratising knowledge. Podcasts like The Ezra Klein Show, Philosophize This!, or You're Wrong About allow us to eavesdrop on intelligent conversations that stretch our thinking.

Wide reading is essential. Not just self-help or business books, but fiction, history, philosophy, science, and world literature. Books like Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist offer radically different frameworks for interpreting the world.

Theory of knowledge, Socratic questioning, and mind-mapping frameworks can also help people visualise and structure thought in diverse ways.

We can normalise being intellectually uncomfortable.
We can model this in our homes, community groups, and professional spaces.
Parents can encourage their children to ask ‘why’ even when it’s inconvenient. Managers can reward constructive disagreement. Friends can recommend books that challenge, not just affirm.

This matters because self-leadership, the ability to make wise, values-driven choices in an unpredictable world, depends on our capacity to think. When we fail to cultivate that, we leave ourselves vulnerable to manipulation, dogma, and shallow living.

To embed this in daily life, one might begin with a weekly reflection practice
What did I learn this week that challenged me?
Who did I disagree with and what did I learn from them?
What am I avoiding because it makes me uncomfortable?

We don’t need permission to think more deeply, but we may need reminders, and perhaps this is one, in a world that profits from our silence, learning to think and to think for ourselves is one of the most radical acts we can commit to.

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