Thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking

Hello you woolly mammoth.

Another January, another blustery Sunday snow storm: am I right?

For those of us living in eastern Canada, the earth has been covered in muffled white.  So as we settle in to the winter-y winteriness of winter-- and all of the white-washed cosy cocooning that comes with it-- why not grab a cup of tea and join me in a little visit to the land of reflexive esoteria.

In short, I have been thinking a bit this week about thinking. Specifically, how do our brains give form to the rich miasma of life in which we float and somehow coalesce this fog into a new idea, a creative thought or a new way of seeing the world.

There is a lot of myth and magic around the practice of generating new ideas. But the reality is that we are all working with our miraculous but flimsy and oh-so-fallible brains to understand ourselves and the world around us.  (PS: I have recommended the book "Thinking, fast and slow" about a hundred times, but if you want to understand how we process the world, this is a great place to start). 

And a lot about the process of generating new ideas is drugery. “The origin stories of big ideas, whether in math or any other field, generally highlight the eureka moments. You can’t really blame the storytellers. It’s not so exciting to read 'and then she studied some more.' But this arduous, mundane work is a key part of the process; without it, the story is just a myth.”

That said, while it is also a myth that we only use 10% of our brains, our brains (ironically) remain poorly understood. So until we unlock the mysteries of consciousness, trudging through cycles of work followed by rest is the most effective way to create and innovate.  

So locking in for an initial period of concentration—conscious, directed attention— followed by some amount of unconscious processing is the way to go if we want to build up to a "eureka" moment. But what about playing around with not only HOW to think but also WHAT you think about?

I liked this article about the value of grey thinking. In today's hyperbolic, hyper-polarized society, "it takes a substantial deprogramming to realize that life is all grey, that all reality lies on a continuum." This is an easy truth to observe and agree with, but it is another thing to put it into practice. (PS: Which compels me to also layer in the Dunning-Kruger effect in case you are not familiar, which highlights how incapable we are at assessing our own competence)
 
The great thing about grey thinking, in my opinion, is that it encourages us to get rid of some of the lazy crutches we use to think about ourselves and the world. "It’s only once you can begin divorcing yourself from good-and-bad, black-and-white, category X&Y type thinking that your understanding of reality starts to fit together properly. Putting things on a continuum, assessing the scale of their importance and quantifying their effects, understanding both the good and the bad, is the way to do it. Understanding the other side of the argument better than your own... is the way to do it. Because truth always lies somewhere in between, and the discomfort of being uncertain is preferable to the certainty of being wrong. It isn’t easy, but it’s not supposed to be."

To be clear, I do not profess to be good at this. It is HARD. But I am trying to practice this more. Accepting the vast complexity of the world and the people in it. Trying to hold contradictions and let two (or more) things be true at once. Because, as Daniel Kahneman from "Thinking, fast and slow" tells us: “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.” And I do believe that embracing complexity and holding multiple truths at once are two concrete ways to create, learn and grow.

Now hold on a sec... since we are wandering in the esoteric of thinking about thinking (and because I can't help mixing theoretical physics with considerations of consciousness) I also liked this article about the simple idea behind Einstein’s greatest discoveries, which essentially makes the case for a lot more acceptance of contradiction and the weirdness of reality.
 

“Matter and energy themselves are less fundamental than the underlying relationships between them. We tend to think of things, not relationships, as the heart of reality. But most often, the opposite is true. “It’s not the stuff,” said the Brown University physicist Stephon Alexander. The same is true, Einstein showed, for “stuff” like space and time, seemingly stable, unchangeable aspects of nature; in truth, it’s the relationship between space and time that always stays the same, even as space contracts and time dilates. Like energy and matter, space and time are mutable manifestations of deeper, unshakable foundations: the things that never vary no matter what.”

Thinking is something we do in every waking moment. It is the filter through which we understand ourselves, the world and our place in it.  And so I think it is helpful to reflect every once in a while about how we think, both to see where the blind spots might be and how we might benefit from thinking in new or different ways. It's like a little brain maintenance check (without having to worry about getting upsold on air filter replacement parts)

Finally, in a related vein and since we are all snowed under, I thought I would leave you with a short reflection question to ponder as you stare out into the blank whiteness:

 

What is one question that you found yourself asking over and over again lately?
What version of an answer are you living your way into?

But wait! Is all this talk of thinking about thinking a bit too intense for your Sunday morning? Then speaking of inclement weather, please feel free to check out this quick video of a weather reporter this week in Newfoundland taking one on the chin from mother nature

Still too much realness?  Then check out this collection of 33 pictures of weird and rare flowers

From one thinking person to another, I am glad that we can create and grow together. I hope you enjoyed this dispatch, and have a reflection-filled week!

Until next Sunday,
The Earnest Platypus