Can they exist without individuals upholding, embracing and exerting them continuously, by people able to think as and for themselves? Like celebrities they need US to sustain them and lend them substance and meaning, in and through our lives.

Ironically I do not know of a Constitution or Bill of Rights of any nation that articulates and recognises this fundamental right, namely our right to think our OWN thoughts? Can you? I suspect that part of the reason for this finds root in our tendency to see our ability to think freely as self-evident, and therefore not in need of protection. However a well-known and simple thought experiment challenges this assumption clearly – try it. It’s easy; just don’t think about a blue banana for 30 seconds – for a whole half-minute do not think of a single blue banana. As we know, the entire multi-billion dollar advertising industry works on the premise that we are susceptible to suggestion, to the tyranny of the blue banana.

Surely the biggest blue banana of the last decade involves George Bush and Tony Blair’s “war on terror”. How will they escape standing accountable for the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? And why do you and I expect them to escape, to not stand trial before the law? Because blue bananas die hard. Because we have yet to truly embrace the thought en mass and for ourselves, that our leaders must stand trial for a war perpetrated on fabricated grounds, against a sovereign nation.

Mandela spoke truth when he said, “we are free to be free”. But we need to seize it. Moment by moment. Especially freedom of thought.

Check out “THE URGE TO BELIEVE AND THE NEED TO JAM IT.”