Speaking about independent thoughts, I think it's crucial to NOT trust anything one heard and do one's own research, especially those fed by news agencies. By s

Speaking about independent thoughts, I think it's crucial to NOT trust anything one heard and do one's own research, especially those fed by news agencies. By saying "research" I mean a rigorous research that not only includes newspaper, magazine and other light reading materials, but also drill deep into books and (most important) official documents if applicable. I also found it useful to build up a framework of analysis to remove some weight of the research. After all one cannot take that research methodology to everything one would like to research into, so by getting a framework one knows which material to avoid.