We need, urgently need, to be aware of the remarkable thing that we are doing when really thinking!
When thinking from our true-selves; we are knowing, participating and creating.
Only in thinking is freedom - Only in thinking is agency.
Consciousness severs us from the world - but thinking restores the world to us.
Thinking is the cure of alienation (properly understood, properly done) - It is in real thinking that we belong to the world, and the world to us; in thinking we know that the world is real and autonomous; and we know that we ourselves are co-creators of the world - which, until we thought it, was partial and incomplete.
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Such are the joyous, inspiring and motivating insights which may be attained from reading, pondering and knowing Rudolf Steiner's early metaphysical/ epistemological works:
Philosophy of Freedom (aka. Philosophy of Spiritual Activity - of 1894)
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_index.html
and his Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception (of 1886).
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1985/GA002_index.html
I have found a couple of essays by the highly-insightful (and highly-irritating!) maverick Anthroposophist Joel Wendt to be helpful and clarifying of what these books mean and how they should be understood:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Prokofieffbookreview.html
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Saving.html