Tangible events are rarer in old age. We contemplate, we wait for the unspoken, we doze. If action filled our earlier years we may be forced to find quieter alternatives later on. Are we adaptable enough for this?
How about: thinking? In youth, thought seemed as natural as breathing, hardly worth thinking about. A jeu de mots! Are we on our way? Not really.
Purposeful thinking is hard. Quite distinct from daydreaming. It requires a subject. With possibilities. With blank spots not yet filled in. Marked out in logical steps.
Let the subject be: thinking! A good choice, offering infinite possibilities. But should we first define thought? That is, apply our mind to it, not Google it. Immediately difficulties are apparent. Thought seems to be a dynamic sequence. But of what? Images? Spoken words? Written words? Music? Mathematical statements? All these things and more?
Obviously, thought – with all its implications – is too enormous for a retired journalist (A shallow profession in many people’s view.) who has reluctantly put aside ski-ing and long-distance swimming. Understanding thought may be enough.
We lurch forward. We think to arrive at a conclusion – ie, information that may benefit us. Ironically the conclusion must come first, it is the target we aim at. With the bow, arrow and force applied to the bowstring. What might the first step be? A forest of signposts arise. Let’s choose To History. Have I ever thought successfully?
I have. I read a book so vivid, so comprehensive, so important I felt honour-bound to arrive at its essence and to convey this to others. My debt to the author. The book’s essence was not stated; articulating it was up to me. Hard abstract work conducted in the vault of my mind.
Today, I faced my next blog post.
For a long time a kind of wonderment about thought has flitted around in my mind. I know this is only a minute part of what you are questioning and I have tried to express it before to others who seem either not to grasp the concept I have in mind or are not sufficiently interested to discuss it further.
ReplyDeleteAlthough what I am writing does not relate directly to your proposition for the use of thought, there is a tenuous connection.
As an example: say I have a thought that I want to convey to you. I now use pure invention for my example. It may be the I want to tell you about the relationship between two people we know. The”thought" before I speak includes the whole thing, character definitions, the immediate subject of that relationship I want to convey, time and place, and many other factors that are bundled into a “thought" that could occupy the space of a whole novel. I am then limited by the language I use when I start to try and tell you what I am thinking. If I try to convey it all, it becomes laborious and so long that you will likely loose interest so I have to try and précis it. Going back to the outset in my mind it is the wonderment at the volume of information that initial thought can contain in a sort of, dare I say," bubble” followed by the inadequacies of the spoken word.
27 NOVEMBER 2020 AT 23:05
I'm just off to bed and this would require rather more thought than I can call up at the moment. One important factor is using language precisely. Short sentences are a help with this. More follows
ReplyDeleteLet me see if I can apply clarity, precision and sequence to your comment.
ReplyDeleteIn real life certain events, sequences, people, contradictions, etc, (let’s call them subjects) catch your attention more than others. These subjects remain in your mind as memories. Memories consist of clusters of thoughts. You’re tempted to express these memories orally or in writing but this turns out to be difficult. Inevitably these difficulties lie with you not the memories.
On closer examination the thoughts constituting these memories seem to multiply in an infinite number of directions. Not only that but these thoughts are not always recalled in words: they may arrive as feelings (happiness, revulsion, confusion), as images, as sounds, as entities requiring judgment.
What they never arrive as is something like “a character definition”. That would be a collection of closely related thoughts; nothing in real life presents itself that neatly. It would be your job to create it
You cite, as a possible example, the relationship between two people. Consider at this point an instruction manual for some complicated device. If this turns out to be useful and easy to use it’s because the information is presented in the right order. This is not as easy as it sounds. In some cases certain units of information may be less important than others; for clarity’s sake it may be desirable this less important information is located elsewhere in the manual, not in the main sequence. You too face similar pressures.
Each step in what you think (leading to what you say or write) must adhere logically to what has gone before. Unlike fiction, where one may break off to describe a character’s clothes.
Here’s how you might start:
This thought is about X and Y, a man and a woman, and their relationship.
Their relationship seems odd (or different, undesirable, etc). I infer (don’t imagine this is the same as imply) this from what I have observed (ie, seen), overheard, or been told. Normal behaviour is such and such. Not not with them. They do this and that.
I’m aware that I may have misinterpreted what I have seen and heard. And that others may have told me lies. Now defend what you know.
This is as far as I will take it. This response is already too long and you may forget, or have misread what I wrote. Here are some tips.
Don’t overload the sequence with information that, however interesting, is not strictly relevant. You’re organising info, not entertaining readers or listeners. This is especially important at the beginning.
Avoid – as far as possible – adjectives and adverbs. Keep sentences short.
Be alert to the possibility that a later addition may allow you to delete an earlier factoid.
Distrust brilliant options that suddenly present themselves. How necessary is it to the past? How inevitably does it lead to the future?
Don’t be disappointed if what you say leads to banality. There aren’t too many original things floating around.
Your surmise about the working of our brains is interesting and puts my query into some kind of perspective and of course, as many others have said, it sounds so much like a computer putting things in files and folders and possibly with the ability to "sort" amongst other attributes.
ReplyDeleteI was not really saying that I have a problem, any worse than anybody else about expressing myself verbally. I was just trying to put my wonderment into words. To think that a single "thought" inside the head can contain so much. One area of "thought" that is difficult to translate into verbal expression is the business of a unique ambience or atmosphere which is defined and recognised in the head as a thought and may consist of a strange combination one or several of the five senses with a dash of memory, and perhaps association with something unconnected all summing up to something that is almost impossible to convey to another but so recognisable to you specifically because it has become homogeneous rather than heterogeneous.