Thought
Item No. 8
“Requires a pause. Requires time.”To think is to “direct one’s mind toward someone or something; to use one’s mind actively to form connected ideas.” The thing is that thinking can happen on different time scales. Since we often measure in time, maybe it's interesting to think about this. There are undoubtedly situations where ‘quick-thinking’ is helpful. A search of that term will surface myriad saved lives because of the ‘quick-thinking’ effort and responsiveness of someone else in a crisis. Quick thinking has its benefits. But there are different types of thinking. And different paces of thinking. Some thought takes time. Most of us know Daniel Kahneman’s work, Thinking Fast and Slow. System 1; fast and instinctual. System 2; more deliberate and slow. For this catalog entry in The Last Catalog, we refer not to the fast and instinctual kind of thinking, but the slow, deliberate kind of thinking. Deliberative thought. The “long and careful consideration” or discussion it can take to mull through an idea. The “slow and careful” movement of thought. Googling ‘quick-thinking’ might yield lives saved, but ‘Googling’ deliberate thinking–the philosophical type, might rather yield a series of titles like Never mind endangered animals, it's the thinkers we need to save or Is Philosophy an endangered species? And Are Thinkers an Endangered Species? Cal Newport’s work on slow-productivity helps us to think about why thought might sit in the endangered bucket. These days, we value productivity–the measurement of our output. But Newport’s work invites this question: “is there no reasonable definition of productivity, that shouldn’t also apply to lying on one’s back, gazing upward at the sky and thinking hard about how to create something wonderful?” And notice, we haven’t even mentioned the idea yet of Artificial Intelligence (AI) thinking for us–yet. If we outsource our thoughts, where will our thoughts be?
Our mind. Options. Creativity. Our future.
Other specifications:
Requires a pause. Requires time.