I've always thought of a free thinker as someone who is free to think without threat of punishment (real or imagined). In that sense it could be an umbrella term to describe all forms of skeptics.

LOL, I've adopted a mish-mash of almost all anarchist schools of thought. I've been doing a lot of exploring and find there is something to be had from all of them (we can assume I don't include "anarcho"-capitalism in this).

Having said that I do find aspects of anarcho-primitivism attractive. Namely that regarding institutional labor. But we can talk about that at some future time if you like.

Aside from that, I can see what you mean in regard to privilege and maybe I'm deluding myself in not understanding the problem of it.

Privilege within this context would suggest a position of economic advantage. Yet it would also suggest an added feeling of entitlement (which I don't feel I have) from the economic system we find ourselves in.

Are not the abject poor only defined so within the confines of a capitalist economy? Indigenous/primitive peoples having little influence from Western style economic structures wouldn't define themselves as abjectly poor, right? Yet because they largely don't put value on material goods as much as we do in the West (I'm referring mostly to people very much like the Piraha of South America as they are a perfect model in describing a primitive, non-authoritarian society) they really have no sense of privilege.

Could it be that we are only as poor as we are told we are? That the capitalist system endeavors us to engage within it that it may continue to exist?

Granted, we may not be discussing luxury so much as the simple fact that the abject poor you mentioned literally have little access to simple things such as food. A whole host of problems crop up around this not least of which is an accident of geography (poor agricultural conditions) but it is also largely to do with international trade as well as state oppression of minority ethnic groups (which I don't know as I can adequately address within this commentary).

While you're right in that going off-grid isn't necessarily an effective means to combat the state it is (to me anyway) a means to combat the capitalist system that feeds the state. I'm seeking to distance myself from consumerism and get away from disposable culture.

Additionally, I don't know as I'd label it as a position of privilege. Many people have lived off the grid and lived simple lives for centuries. When we commodify all the trappings of modern industrial/capitalist civilization it would appear that those that do without would seem to be more in an advantageous position to do so. It's not the case.

Of late I've become a bit of a Luddite and see industrialized civilization as a bane on the earth and to humanity.

I ran into a similar situation in a Facebook group a while back.

I posted on my blog about it actually.

Yes, I'm looking forward to it :)

Hi Amanda! Thanks for dropping by!

Feel free to check out my other posts too :)

And to you too sbj :-)

Right :-)

Thanks!

LOL, I don't think you hold the kind of disdain and loathing that I've run across with some atheists.

My attitude is both an indictment against Stalinist-type atheists and a cautionary reminder that if we hold on to this kind of loathing and disdain then it only brews into things more potent; driving people of faith away from the very thing that we hope they would aspire to: freethought.

I've been posting these on Facebook and you wouldn't believe some of the reactions. To some it's almost as if I'm some kind of traitor.