Archives for posts with tag: Thinking

“I suppose it is tempting,
if the only tool you have is a hammer,
to treat everything as if it were a nail”

Abraham Maslow

I write this blog in the hope that ’embodying’ my thoughts will somehow help me.
Help me solve some of the quirky questions which have been haunting me for sometime now.

Why so many people have been convinced that thinking may help them make sense of things?
Why so many otherwise smart people have convinced themselves that thinking ‘in solitude’ would take them to the ‘right’ place?
Why so many seemingly reasonable people have somehow become certain that their version of things was the only one valid? To the tune of trying to impose it to those happening to be around them?

The first answer was easy to find.
Because that’s how we make sense of things.
And because that’s what people do when they have no other alternative.
They start thinking about how to get out of the mess into which they have entered by not thinking! Enough…

The second one was also easy. Ish… specially after I did come up with the question formulated like this.
Apparently, to shield their minds from ‘distraction’. From the mundane ‘minor’ problems which might have wasted their ‘brain power’.
In reality, simply because they could do it. They had a great time doing it – thinking, that was – so they indulged on every occasion they had. And smart as they were, they made it possible for them to have more and more time available for thinking.
And they cut themselves off from the rest of the world because the few people able to partake in the process not always shared the same opinion. Thus otherwise smart thinkers ended up in the company of sycophants…

Having found the answer for the second question opened, wide, the door for the third answer.
No, it wasn’t the presence of the sycophants which convinced the otherwise reasonable thinker that their was the only valid solution for whatever problem they had in mind at anyone time.
Sycophants showering praise were only a ‘favorable circumstance’. A mere opportunity for it to happen.

Unhindered by any outside intervention, the tinkering thinker turned his tool to his own head.
And hammered out all the remaining doubts his mind was still harboring.

Interesting enough.

And yes, what you think about me is more about you than about the real me.

Nevertheless, the point of this post is:

For me,

You are what I think you are!

I’ve reached the conclusion that thinking and digesting have very much in common.

Citarum 2

We can’t do it by our own. Those of us who don’t cooperate/speak with those around them, don’t have what to eat or what to think about.

Both processes imply three stages. Identification, absorption, use.
We use cultural models to identify both our food and the important issues.
Absorption – through our gut/conscience, is both highly specific to each individual and governed by our common DNA/shared cultural traditions.
The ‘products’ of the digesting/thinking process are, again, used both in public as well as in private. Part of the energy we get from our food is consumed ‘cooperatively’ with our ‘coworkers’ while most of our thoughts end up either verbally expressed or put in practice.

Both processes, digesting as well as thinking, increasingly change the environment where we, and others, live.

Citarum 1