Everybody thinks, and thanks to that humans have been able to build a civilization that is moving in the direction of increasing freedoms and prosperity. However, human thought process is severely constrained and conditioned due to socialization, environment and history.
A very interesting theory by sociologist G.H.Mead in his work Mind, Self and Society argues that in order to think we need symbols that represent concepts. The symbols are learned from the society, primarily in the form of language. In a way, it argues that thinking is possible only if there exist a society. As a corollary, we can argue that thinking is constrained by the ideas and concepts prevalent in the society. It is also consistent with various neurological studies that have found that different languages wire neurons differently and it affects how we think. The Hollywood movie Arrival (2016) stretched it too far where an alien language had an altogether different concept of time, and the protagonist who learned this language could see stills from the future. Well it’s just science fiction, but the key point here is that society influences our thinking (both ability and content). Take for example democracy and human rights which have become common sense now, didn’t make sense to humans thousands of years ago.
However, the theory seems only half of the truth. It presupposes the existing of society for thinking. But without “thinking” a complex organisation such as society cannot emerge. So we’re stuck with the — chicken and the egg problem. Perhaps a more satisfying proposition by Mead is that both thinking ability and society co-evolved through dialectic process.
Therefore we can argue that it is possible to create new concepts through thinking which hitherto never existed in society. This is what the so called ‘thinkers’ like Socrates, Plato, Hobbes, Mills etc. did. It requires breaking the constraints imposed by the existing concepts (or society) and ‘thinking’ while assuming that such constraining concepts never existed. I like to call this mode of thinking as ‘zeroth mode of thinking’.
What comes closer to this ‘zeroth’ mode is the thought experiment by John Rawls where he argues that in order to envisage a just social system one must put on the ‘veil of ignorance’ i.e. the thinker doesn’t know what class will he belong to. It is a great tool to design social systems and correct injustices.
This idea of ignoring the present conditions, or putting on the ‘veil of ignorance’, or entering the ‘zeroth mode of thinking’ has vast application not just in social sciences and philosophy but in science, mathematics, and all other spheres.
Using zeroth mode of thinking requires ignoring elements which are often too sacred to us. For example, on language issues we can ignore the identity aspect of it and focus only on technological aspect of it, on genders issues we can ignore the difference between sexes to design a gender-equal society, and so on.
However, there is a catch. In the process of overlooking certain elements we may adventure into a direction which is totally opposite to the current notions development (which is also a form of constraint on thinking). Further the new concept that we evolve may not be practically possible to implement (such as completely gender neutral laws in 20th Century). Thus, such a thinker risks being a deviant and may stand accused of blasphemy — by deconstructing the sacred concepts of society.
As discussed above, thinking cannot be completely independent of the society. This is the single most limitation of this approach. Therefore, in order to think in zeroth mode, we need to think about a subject which itself is a concept given by society. So essentially what we are doing is, prioritizing some concepts and ignoring all others. If we ignore all the concepts, we risk falling into the realm of Nihilism.
To begin with we need to choose some concepts which will become pivot for the thinking. I suggest to consider the following concepts as fundamental (i.e. sacred for rest of exercise)
We observe that these seemingly obvious fundamental concepts have not been fulfilled in toto even after thousands of years of social organisation. This shall give us an idea about the difficulty in achieving even simpler social goals.
What I have listed above are some fundamental concepts, which are subject to change. Others may start from different fundamental concepts and will reach a different type of social organisation. So, rest of the things like social justice, equality, etc. will become a matter of perspective on the basis concepts that one hold as sacred. Once we have created a destination, we can then search for a path to reach there from present.