Appeals To Popularity

Appeals to popularity are among the most popular in American culture.  The fact that a plethora of logical and introspective truths can be known without any social prompting is regularly overlooked in similar cultures, with unprovable ideas such as the one expressed by the statement "other people exist" being accepted prior to social discussion instead.  However, as asinine as looking to consensus is, realizing the stupidity of appeals to popularity is only one side of the matter.  A person cannot construct a true worldview on the basis of popularity or thoroughly embrace rationalism on a consistent basis due to dialogue.  Still, this only amounts to one of multiple things a seeker of truth must realize.  The second needs affirmation as well.

Default rejection of an idea just because one's family, local community, or nation at large accepts it is just as asinine as looking to consensus as the revealer of truth.  Agreement neither proves something is true nor proves it is false.  An intellectually competent person will not think something true simply on the basis of uniqueness or its potential for social controversy.  They will instead look for ideas that meet two requirements: the ideas must both reflect reality and be logically verifiable, as concepts that do not reflect reality cannot be proven and even genuine truths that are not knowable cannot be rationally believed.  Nothing more determines if reason leads to a belief.

Consensus is irrelevant, not a sign of either truth or falsity.  While autonomous reasoning will never become unecessary or unimportant, meaning that an individual's philosophical initiative and utilization of reason are always needed, mere ideological separation from a group does not mean that someone has a correct worldview.  A group might collectively hold to ideas that are true, but the ideas never reflect reality because multiple people agree or believe that they do.  Whether their true ideas are thought of independently or first encountered from them, personal, rationalistic reflection is an epistemological necessity in all cases.

A sense of empowerment derived simply from standing apart from popular philosophies is incomplete if one dismisses truths when the majority embraces them (a very unlikely thing, admittedly), just as it remains incomplete if one has not examined the unpopular or otherwise undiscovered truths one affirms.  Aligning with truth for its own sake is the only way to achieve genuine philosophical depth and soundness.  Subjective satisfaction of ego is one of the only "gains" brought by regarding group consensus any other way than a total red herring to matters of truth.  Some people may feel at peace when they ideologically resemble others, and some people may feel excited at having minority worldviews, but both can align with reason without looking to others first and foremost.