Think

For the last several months at least there has been a billboard standing in Moscow that says "Think before you believe." It has a picture of a young woman in a dim-but-thoughtful pose with her index finger over her slightly pursed lips. All in all a rather patronising, vaguely insulting, and somewhat ironic attempt at proselytising by some self-described humanists. We don't have any choice besides thinking about it first, but thinking isn't what was being appealed to in the ad. It was really more like a cigarette ad; you want to be cool and grown up, don't you? Lame and cynical, thank you for smoking. Who has utopian visions of a world without faith? Where love and beauty are burned at the stake by the Inquisition of Hard Rationality? I don't get it.
We all have the responsibility to help think things through, even if we're not all gifted thinkers. The conversation has been going on for a long time, and is part of our culture. I'm annoyed a bit that part of the conversation is going on in lowbrow billboard propaganda. That it's about attitude and being cool enough to rationally avoid what to me are the best parts of being human. Well, it's a much bigger topic than I can possibly do justice to in one puny blog entry, and I have school tomorrow.