"The first duty of a man is to think for himself"

One thing that really caught my attention in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha was the themes of Wisdom vs. Instruction. Those themes I really like, as individualism is a strong personal belief of mine. I believe that lessons and true knowledge and wisdom can't be taught; that people must go out to the world and experience and think and interpret the world for themselves in order to glean any amount of wisdom from it. It is the responsibility of every teacher and every individual to be in the mindset "The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see" (Alexandra K. Trenfor). People must decide the world for themselves. Freedom of thought must be the most fundamental staple of all society: above the freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion. Thought is the most basic, most identifying action of all humans, and all individualism and distinction from the masses is completely dependent on thought: one cannot speak, believe, or come together freely, truly, without thought. And experience goes hand in hand with thought. The experiences and lessons taught by the world are the fundamental basis our thought springs from: therefore, to avoid thinking in the exact same conformist way as our teachers or those around us, we must experience the world on our own and our own thoughts will emerge in conjunction.
So the themes presented in Siddhartha about how Siddhartha Jr. must go out to make his mistakes on his own and learn for himself the ways of the world, rather than staying in the thought that Siddhartha could protect his son from the world are themes I would like to focus on. As Siddhartha is musing about the impossibility of his having learned the lessons of the world for his son, "Or do you really believe that you committed your own follies so as to spare your son from committing them?" (Hesse 101).  He believes that since he did whatever mistakes, he can impose those wisdoms on his son via lessons alone, rather than his son actually learning for himself: to think and learn for him. But his son needs to be saved from the evils of the world by himself, just as Siddhartha before him learned for himself learned the ways of the world, and not from his teachers and his father.  "Who saved the Samana Siddhartha from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from folly? Were his father's piety, his teachers' admonitions, his own knowledge, and his own searching able to protect him? What father, what teacher, was able to protect him from living life himself?" (Hesse 101). So just as Siddhartha learned his own lessons for himself, he learns his son must learn these lessons for himself as well, and be able to think and interpret on his own as an individual, rather than being told and taught what to think and what lessons to learn.