What do you think caused the rise of Nazi Germany?
I stared dumbfounded at my A-Levels history assignment. What do I think… What is there for *me* to think? The origin of Nazi Germany is whatever the textbook says. It’s a matter of fact, not opinion. How am I to write 1,000 words on this?
Too proud to seek help, I cobbled together an essay and handed it in to Alastair, my History teacher, quietly confident I had cracked the task after all. A week later, he returned my essay with a C scrawled at the top, the first in my life.
I was crestfallen.
The unthinking multitude
I arrived in the UK on an all-expenses-paid Thai government scholarship as the consummate student. For seventeen years I had excelled in Thai education and thought myself smart with my perfect GPA.
What I did not know was that my stellar marks only meant I was good at memorising textbooks. In Thailand, all the examinations that mattered consisted entirely of multiple-choice questions—“What caused WWI?” had a single correct answer and no room for debate.
That C was a rude awakening. It opened my eyes to a world I did not know was there, a world where anyone could have an opinion, where the right answers weren’t necessarily in textbooks, where indeed there often were no right answers.
More shockingly, it revealed my complete lack of critical faculties. At seventeen years of age, I realised for the first time I did not know how to think. Which was somewhat distressing.
Thankfully I had an adolescent’s confidence and Alastair’s tireless guidance, both of which bolstered me as I dedicated the next several months to learning how to think. Essay by essay—one C after another, then B, then A—I stepped gingerly into that dazzling new world where I could have an opinion, and even knew how to articulate it.
Years later, during my undergraduate degree at University College London, I’d write an essay critiquing Thailand’s stifling education system that’s robbed an entire nation of critical thought, sneaking in a reference I thought clever to Kant’s “unthinking multitude,” conveniently forgetting how unthinking I had been myself until oh so very recently.
My mission
Today, I have a newsletter called Val Thinks whose stated mission is to make my 360 readers in 41 countries “stop and think” every week.
I’d love to say my writer’s mission can be traced to that C in my History essay fifteen years ago, but that’s simply not true. I had no grand plans for Val Thinks. I just didn’t know what my newsletter would cover so had to choose a title vague enough to encompass any topic.
The mission came later. A year into my writing journey, I joined a Substack writers’ workshop and one of the things I took away, alongside wonderful writer friends, was the importance of knowing what I had to offer. I took a newsletter break and for weeks wrestled with the question: What is my value proposition?
In the end, I decided on a weekly newsletter that makes you stop and think. Not because I had made it my life mission to jog the minds of the “unthinking multitude,” but because it made for a catchy tagline.
But then, as I had gingerly stepped into the world of opinions fifteen years earlier, with each newsletter, each question I left my readers with, I slowly adopted my casual tagline as my writer’s identity. The more I wrote, the more it seemed a worthwhile mission.
Thinking has played a vital role in my life. When I repeatedly fell depressed in university, thinking about my life helped me delve into the depths of my despair and dispel it. When I had a manic breakdown and was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, questioning the identities and values my 25-year-old self had unthinkingly adopted helped me construct a healthier psyche, belief by belief. And as I patched my existence back together in the ensuing years, I had to carefully consider every element I invited into, or barred from, my life.
Without thinking, I would be a very different person to the one writing these words. I shudder to imagine what my life now would resemble if I had never been assigned that History essay. Would I still believe everything in textbooks? Would I notice the prevalence of subjective opinions masquerading as objective facts? Would I have learnt to think?
Even though the mission of Val Thinks was not so much conceived as stumbled upon, I now know that I want more than anything to cultivate a habit of thinking in myself, and also others.
Through my words, I want to build a world filled with the thinking multitude, people who carefully consider what they do, who question preconceived notions, who don’t blindly follow the crowd, who realise they can live a life they choose.
Will you join me?
What do you think?
If my newsletter could be for even one person what that History essay was for me, I’d be thrilled. And now for today’s brutal question:
Do you think?
Like, really. Do you think before you speak or act? Do you question your beliefs and values? Do you engage curiously with the world? Please hit “reply” or leave a comment—I read every response and I’d love to hear from you. If you want, share this post with a friend who might appreciate my thoughts.
Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful, and it’s so good to be back,
Val
Another great article! Would you ever consider writing in Thai to potentially reach more of your fellow countrymen and be their Alastair? Or has Thai schooling changed over the last decade already?