How to think for myself

I was watching The Colbert Report and Stephen Colbert asked Raj Patel, an author & activist, the below interesting question -

Stephen Colbert: I would love to think for myself. How should I do that?

Raj Patel: "I entirely think questioning the world around you, why it is that resources are distributed the way that they are is a good start. And then getting to the root causes of why there is poverty, why there is hunger. Asking these kinds of questions gets you to a much better place for thinking about how to change the world than merely following the directives of someone whose voice is ethereally about you right now.

The underlined sentence above is a very good answer to an extremely complex question. To start to understand the world around us, we have to start by questioning why 'resources are distributed the way that they are' currently.

(First chapter of the book The Value of Nothing - First Chapter of The Value of Nothing - pdf
Interview about the book - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXDRNeCFxKQ&feature=related

First chapter mentions that The Great Transformation, a 1940s book by Karl Polanyi, is a very important book to read.. Also mentioned is The Shock Doctrine - Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

Other books by Raj Patel - Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
A talk about "Real Price of Food" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21b8kRKcgV4&feature=related)