About 15 years ago there was the phenomena of the Red Had Societies. It seemed like every woman over 60 was joining. The clubs were based on a poem which began, "When I am old, I shall wear purple/With a red hat". It went on to detail how the poet was going to learn to spit and do other things she'd repressed herself from doing out of fear of Polite Society. She was going to be unique and not care what anyone else thought about it.

Freedom in Unique Eccentricity

Charmed and intrigued by the idea of such freedom, older women began banding together so they could share in the vision of unique eccentricity. Their uniform was stated in the rules of their societies: everyone had to wear purple dresses and red hats...unless you were under 60, at which point you needed to wear lavender dresses. Because they would look silly doing it by themselves. You know, like the author of the poem was going to do.

Everyone Be Different Together

The thing was...the clubs had a lot of rules. And leaders. And when everyone wears a red hat and a purple dress, you'd be a lot more unique if you showed up wearing green. There's nothing brave or carefree about wearing garish mismatched clothing if everyone around you wears the same outfit. You might be having fun, but you're not unique. You're acting out someone else's thought and dream. It's not yours.

Plagiarism of Ideas

This plagiarism of ideas is being repeated in many other parts of life today. We're seeing college kids insist their bizarre outlook is so fresh and vital while just regurgitating a weird amalgam of useless concepts already tried and abandoned in the real world. We have people of all ages, classes and positions constantly making important-sounding statements as though they've just invented them without seeming to realize they're tired old cliches. We hear the same advice for the same situations given with the earnestness of a real thought but no recognition that the advice keeps failing. We are desperately in need of some real thoughts, for people to really see and weigh what is in front of them and react with something other than pre-programmed responses (and this does not mean following some weird fringe fad and claiming "this is the REAL ME!").

Raised on an Assembly Line

I'm not sure many of us in Western culture today are even aware of what it means to have a unique thought, let alone a consistently unique perspective. We're sort of being raised like clones on an assembly line, ideas poured into our heads to take the place of real thought, whatever might've made us different smoothed carefully away to keep from making other people uncomfortable. Unless it's something designed to destroy the old tried and true foundations of family and society - then we're supposed to flaunt it. But even that is a fad and only done when there's lots of examples to follow.

Their Thinking, Not Hers

I read a book a long time ago called "The Curate's Awakening" by George MacDonald. I remember very little of it, but this one part stuck with me:

Indeed, Helen's dissatisfaction went so far that, although the fire kept burning away in perfect contentment before her, she yet came nearer to truly thinking than she had ever in her life. Now thinking, especially to one who tries it for the first time, is seldom a comfortable operation, and hence Helen was very close to becoming actually uncomfortable. She was on the border of making the unpleasant discovery that the chief business of life is to discover, after which there is little more comfort to enjoy of the sort with which Helen had up to then been familiar.

I do not mean to imply that Helen was dull in her mental capacities, or that she contributed nothing to the bubbling of the intellectual pool in the social gatherings of Glaston - far from it. Helen had supposed she could think because the thoughts of other people had passed through her quite regularly, leaving many a phantom conclusion behind. But this had been their thinking, not hers.

This is the sad condition of most of us today. We do not think. We collect other peoples' thoughts and think they're our own.

We need to always be pondering, "Is this really my idea? Or is it someone else's? And if it is, am I okay with thinking this thought as if it's mine?" We need to stop just letting others' thoughts pass through us and glomming onto them as if they're our own. Collecting ideas and thoughts can be very useful. It's always better to learn from others who've gone before us instead of repeating the same mistakes because we're too arrogant to listen to their experience. But we need to be very frank about what we're picking up from whom.

Would You Jump Too?

I don't know how many generations of mothers have said something to their kids along the lines of, "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?" It's just one of those things mothers find they have to keep pointing out to their children. Today many of those children are jumping right off the cliff behind their friends while proudly holding banners saying, "LOOK AT ME! AREN'T I SO COURAGEOUS AND DIFFERENT AND SPECIAL?"

No. No, they're really not. Not courageous. Not different. They're just thinking other peoples' thoughts. Wearing a red hat and purple dress because someone else wanted to do that to be different. If we want to think our own thoughts, the first step is to acknowledge when we're thinking someone else's. Then we might actually have a chance to be thinkers again.

Lauren Turner, Wife, Mother, chief cook and bottle washer, blogger and caretaker of civilization