The Chemistry of Resistance

“…a people capable of revolution must first be a people capable of imagination.”
— Shahid Bolsen

Everyone fancies themselves a critical thinker.
The last five years exposed how rare that actually is.

You can argue all you like, but if you outsourced your thinking to slogans, complied because it was “for the greater good,” or accepted moral frameworks simply because they were fashionable — this isn’t for you.

Anyway.

My definition of critical thinking is simple:
To live in a constant state of curiosity at the crossroads between pivot and rebellion.

That curiosity isn’t pleasant.
It’s not flow state. It’s not comfort. It’s not intellectual tourism.

It’s the ugly kind — the kind that forces you to stand outside your own mind while it’s turning. You can’t relax into it. You can’t let it carry you. It demands effort, tension, and honesty.

That crossroads between pivot and rebellion isn’t a place you visit.
It’s a daily commute.

Pivot means you are prepared to change direction the moment evidence demands it.
Rebellion means you refuse to accept things simply because they are.

Hold both simultaneously and you’re standing in the only place where real thinking happens.

Drift too far in either direction and it becomes a one-way trip.

Bolsen was right.

There’s a direct link between imagination and critical thinking. Both require you to hold the world firmly enough to see it clearly — but lightly enough to imagine alternatives. To question something properly, you need the imagination to step outside the hive framework and explore what could exist instead of what’s merely agreed upon.

That comes at a cost.

Society doesn’t reward critical thinking. It punishes it.
With labels: Uneducated. Conspiracy theorist. Extremist. Paranoid.

Question the consensus and watch how quickly those labels appear. Not to engage — but to end the conversation without touching the question itself.

The labels exist not because critical thinkers are always right, but because they are disruptive. They refuse to make things easy. They won’t let people rest in their certainties. They ask uncomfortable questions at inconvenient times and notice inconsistencies others agree to ignore.

So an arsenal of dismissals is deployed. Attack the questioner’s credentials. Their motives. Their mental state.

It’s efficient.
It’s comfortable.
And it’s the death of inquiry.

Most people who call themselves “critical thinkers” are full of shit.

It’s easy to be brave on a full stomach. Easy to speak recklessly when nothing is at stake. But when comfort, reputation, or social standing are on the line — watch how quickly the tone changes. Savage in private. Civil in public. Outspoken behind closed doors. Timid in the courtyard.

They stop at rebellion and refuse pivot.

They reject one orthodoxy only to adopt another. Trade mainstream narratives for alternative ones — but they’re still just accepting narratives.

Watch someone who says “you can’t trust the government” defend their preferred statesman with the same unquestioning loyalty they criticise in others. Listen to so-called critical thinkers repeat, word for word, whatever is trending in their chosen echo chamber.

“Question everything” quietly becomes
“Question everything except what we believe.”

That isn’t critical thinking.
It’s oppositional thinking.

Rebellion without pivot.
Curiosity without the willingness to be wrong.
Scepticism without self-reflection.

Cowardice masquerading as courage.

Real critical thinking requires you to question your own questions. To hold your rebellion up to scrutiny. To accept the possibility — even the likelihood — that beliefs you once defended were wrong.

The crossroads demand you interrogate not just them…
but yourself.

Not just the consensus…
but your rejection of it.

So why is real critical thinking so rare?

Because it’s exhausting.
Because it’s lonely.
Because it offers no permanent tribe.

At the crossroads you never fully belong.
You’re too questioning for the believers and too willing to be wrong for the rebels.

You refuse blind acceptance and blind rejection alike.
You deny everyone — including yourself — the comfort of certainty.

Most people can’t sustain that.
Most people don’t want to.

And it’s easy to see why.

The ostrich life is far more appealing.

“Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”
— Starship Troopers

Andrew Wilson once pointed out something many people either don’t understand or refuse to acknowledge:

Your rights — your freedoms, your autonomy — begin and end at your ability to enforce and defend them, either personally or collectively.

We treat speaking freely, questioning narratives, and exercising autonomy as givens. They are not.

Laws aren’t followed because they’re just or sensible. They’re followed because an enforcement mechanism exists behind them — sometimes visible, sometimes abstracted through institutions, coalitions, and power structures — but always real.

This is the part most people avoid confronting.

Because once you accept it, you realise why critical thinking is discouraged. Why obedience is rewarded. Why burying your head in the sand is socially safer than standing at the crossroads.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
— George Orwell

The chemistry of resistance isn’t found in loud rebellion or quiet compliance. It exists in that unstable compound at the crossroads — volatile, uncomfortable, and perpetually reactive.

You don’t sustain it by accident.
You choose it daily.

Knowing that imagination without enforcement is fantasy.
And that the authority to question only exists as long as you’re willing to defend it — through spine, not performance.

So if you find yourself standing there — curious, uneasy, unable to fully belong to either camp — you already understand what Orwell, Bolsen, and others were pointing to from different angles.

The chemistry may begin in the mind.
But it only survives in the spine.

The question isn’t whether you’re capable of critical thinking.

It’s whether you’re willing to pay what it costs.