This is part 2 of a 7-part series.
Click here for part 1.
Ever since learning some things about the relationship between language and thinking, and how they seem to have developed alongside one another and in relation, I’ve been wondering about what human beings were like before that — before we were able to actively think, to make connections, to form complex abstractions. Our savage mind.
We would have been more like animals than we imagine, able to passively have thoughts, but not quite able to deliberately think. Having passive thought responses, but generating no abstract thinking of our own volition. Able to dream but not being able to become lucid enough to make a calculated decision.
With the philosophical discipline being presented here, seeing the action of thinking and the neurological function of Thought itself as separate yet related processes, with distinctively different characteristics, is a practical and necessary observation to make. Thoughts being something you have, thinking being something you do. The action of thinking might be dependent on our ability to have thoughts, but the function of us having thoughts doesn’t depend on our ability to actively think. Passive thought came first, and set the foundation.
Seeing that, it sheds some light on the fact that the action of thinking presents an entirely different set of problems and challenges to humanity. For example, because of the fact that we can think voluntarily but also incorrectly about the world, we are challenged not to think our way into trouble or delusion. This is an issue intrinsic to our ability to actively think — not to the neurological process of passively having thoughts in response to whatever stimuli.
One of the most extreme forms of the above example is treating everything and everyone according to what you think rather than observing how it actually is.* Everything in reality, from people to events, can present you with new or previously unknown factors, so projecting what you think onto reality despite that effectively shuts down personal opportunities to learn and to grow, and also leaves you less effective at relating to everything around you.
“Get rid of self-conceit, for it is impossible to learn that which one thinks they already know.” — Epictetus
Another extreme form of the above example is creating social institutions based on what human beings like to think, rather than what we understand. These are the dominant institutions, ideological and conceptual in nature, their self-preservation putting them at odds with the interests of the people they once may have set out to serve. This is why political, economic and religious leaders are more than happy to shut down avenues of educational and scientific exploration if it’s likely to move against their self-interest.
Developing the ability to consciously think was central to humanity’s maturation. We are tasked with having to develop a certain level of discipline and self-mastery, enough not to allow this ability to become the very thing that prevents us maturing further, or even becoming the foundation of our downfall.
We might be limited in how we can influence the conditions of our thought-responses. They are hard-coded into us and, as far as I can tell, we can only influence them on the surface level, not so much on the process level. But when it comes to what we think, we can go some ways to influence the course and even the language of our thinking, so when we find ourselves having problems as a result of what we think, we are better-able to correct them than if they were with thought itself.
These issues, then, from the personal to the social, are largely not neurological, psychiatric issues, but philosophical, psychological, social, cultural and linguistic ones. That probably covers just about all bases. It goes a long way to show how much of a conscious influence we can have in these matters, so long as we’re willing to understand rather than just to think, and that’s double for people who’ve made beliefs out of what they started thinking and ran with them for the rest of their lives. That means that, no matter how deeply entrenched we are, or if the problems and challenges we face come in the forms of mountainous personal egos or monolithic social institutions, there is nothing that can’t be undone or learned through.
The fact that we were able to have thoughts before developing language and complex abstract thinking is very telling as to their differing characteristics. One of them is that thought seems to consist primarily of imagery, whereas thinking, while utilising imagery, primarily consists of abstract logic/reasoning — the ways we talk to ourselves, the reasoning in between the imagery that strings it together for consistency, the sentences we actively form in our minds and all the things we choose to do with them there; to believe them, to build on them, to counter or to affirm them, to classify things with them, to repeat them, to identify with them, to further interpret through them, etc.
Our ability to think, when coupled with our ability to observe, lays the foundation for us not to be constrained by our thinking. We can recognise it for the tool that it is, and also for the potential problems it can cause when misused.
Therefore, it’s a starting point of this philosophical discipline for people to start observing the language of their own thinking in order to spot its flaws. Doing so will not only make it infinitely easier to avoid delusion-by-thinking, but will also pull apart the false logic that directs thinking into an egotistical self-preserving search — not for truth, but for something to identify with and to believe in.
Simply spotting the flaws in the logic is sometimes enough to bring down the tendencies of false thinking entirely, whether it’s a belief being “held” there, or just an instantaneous addictive tendency to reduce reality to your thinking.
The claims are quite basic, but the consequences of recognising them are immense — the map is not the territory, and thinking is no shortcut to truth.
Note: Meddling with the language of your thinking and potentially completely tearing down your abstractions without a solid foundation on which to develop their replacement can lead to all sorts of unwanted side effects. Mine resulted in anxiety leading to panic attacks, despair at the world, a damaging lack of self-image, and even a kind of strangely voluntary stutter that lasted for way too long. Trying to modify each word as you speak it, based only on how you think the other person is interpreting it, especially in a world full of poor communicators, is almost enough to turn anyone into a broken babbling mess. This is another point of focus of this philosophical discipline.
* I know we can possibly bump heads about “what is”, etc. This isn’t about that. This operates on the most basic practical concept of reality; it’s that which exists between us, not just within us. It can be tested, validated, and for all practical purposes, we can say that we are existing here in this life on Earth, with nature as both a home and a reality check — despite all conceptual theory that might have us thinking there’s no such thing as reality, that we don’t really exist, that we can never see reality for what it is, and how we can fit 3 billion chickens into a pinhead, etc. etc. etc.
