>Well done you. The rest of humanity wakes up and reassembles themselves and the world as we know it almost the same way every morning.

If it's "almost the same" then by definition you are different every morning too.

>Define the integrity of your own mind, Are you different when you wake up every morning?

Yes.

People who make this criticism have totally missed the whole point of Walden. It wasn't about isolation, it was about solitude.

He makes it perfectly clear in the book that he goes to town to see his friends and family every day. He makes it perfectly clear that it's Emerson's land.

He doesn't pretend to be a hermit. It's about the philosophical implications of spending time alone and thinking for yourself, not about being a recluse who depends on no one else.

Most cases in which one is a freethinker has nothing to do with morality or self-interest.

Say that I've decided I really want to have long hair even though I'm a guy. But then, suddenly long hair on guys becomes incredibly popular as a fashion trend. A contrarian might cut their hair short even though they liked it long, just to be opposite of the pack.

But a true rebel just wears their hair long, because that's what they wanted in the first place and they don't give a shit what anyone else thinks. The popularity of long hair for men is totally irrelevant to their decision. They just do what they think is best regardless of others' actions.

You could extrapolate that out to apply to moral decisions too if you want but the logic of it all doesn't have anything to do with what is ethical or not.

In my opinion, in order for a decision to be truly moral a person must come to it themselves. An ethical decision reached on anything other than real ethical conviction is on shaky ground.

I would say freethinker, though that doesn't speak to the validity of a person's beliefs, just their ideological independence.

I've heard it described like this:

A contrarian does the opposite of whatever is mainstream, but a true rebel does whatever they think is good or right, without regard for what is mainstream or not.