The Intellectual Slavery Of Contrarians To Social Consensus

The internet has given people an even greater exposure to all kinds of social interactions that would not otherwise be possible.  That which is popular can become even more overt in its popularity, and minority positions and personalities can likewise become more apparent.  The first of two fallacious reactions to this is perhaps far more obvious to even superficial thinkers: appeals to popularity.  It is easy to find people who directly or indirectly make the glaring logical mistake of outsourcing worldview development to others and simply accept whatever consensus on an issue they encounter.  The second fallacious reaction is certainly less pathetic in the sense that it avoids appeals to popularity, but it remains asinine.  The kind of person who embodies this reaction wants to take the opposite of the common stance on something for no other reason than to do so.

Some people might call them "contrarians," those who simply disagree with popular beliefs or, in some cases, with almost anything that others claim at all.  They will dispute and reject almost every epistemological or metaphysical idea that seems mainstream or "normal."  A contrarian, however, has only taken the opposite stance of someone who merely has the asinine goal of accepting consensus as authoritative on matters of truth, and neither of these two stances are philosophically valid.  The contrarian and popularist are on opposing sides of the narrow road of rationalism and certainty.  Both are born out of stupidity.

There are things a person might reason out without any social input at all, and there are things that almost literally hinge on an initial experience with others.  Regardless of how a person came to first think of a given concept, they can reflect on the matter independently and without looking to memories of any social interactions at all.  A person who lives like this looks to reason instead of popularity because their goal is not to align with a minority or side with the majority.  Instead, their goal is to be rational and understand the aspects of reality that can be known no matter how popular or unpopular and understood or misunderstood they are.

A contrarian and someone who truly thinks consensus is valuable or who simply wants to fit into their culture at the cost of consistency, truth, and intellectual autonomy share a certain quality.  Both of them are utter slaves to the worldviews of other people without regard for reality itself, even if the contrarian is likely to be far closer to the truth in some cases.  One looks to others before choosing to hold the opposite of their ideologies; the other looks to others out of sheer cluelessness about even that which is self-evident or out of an emotionalistic desire to be accepted instead of correct.

The only way to avoid the philosophical slavery to others posed by either of these approaches is to look to reason and reason alone as the ultimate revelator of truth.  Might it be more likely that some concepts will be introduced to oneself by others?  In some cases, yes.  Will some of these concepts be popular in certain cultures at certain times?  Yes.  Will a rational person embrace ideas that are popular out of love of popularity or pursue ideas that are scarcely acknowledged just to seem intelligent to others?  Absolutely not!  Autonomous thinking transcends both the utter catastrophe of appeals to popularity and the potential allure of believing the opposite of others just to sound deep in an illusory way.