But I know how people operate—I’m a person myself. (And yes, it takes one to know one.) We look for short cuts. We want to see a resume before granting anyone a few minutes of our time. Their pedigree is important, and we check for letters behind their name. We have this strange and fanciful notion that there exists a direct relationship between the value of an idea and the calibre of the person who voices it. Great ideas arise only from great people, right? You’ll only harvest mediocrity from the mediocre.
Well yes, but only up to a point. You run a danger if you believe it verbatim. The thing is—while a correlation undoubtedly exists, you’re going to get into trouble if you believe that this is always the case. If you assume that the law is infallible, and you make a rule of disregarding people who lack the ‘right’ background, then somewhere along the way you’ll miss out. Conversely, you’re going to take a lot of rubbish aboard if you pay attention to everything uttered by everyone with a holier-than-thou reputation.
Ordinarily, when one the great unwashed decides to speak their mind on a religious or spiritual topic, a defense mechanism leaps into action. Polite society kicks in its boot with, ‘Oh no, you can’t speak with any authority! You’ve got to prove that you’re an expert first. Only then will we listen. Go away until you can prove your own pudding. And scour your closet for any skeletons before you show your face again.’
This approach helps to winnow out the flotsam, I suppose, but the technique isn’t foolproof. You could all too easily throw out the baby with the bathwater. I reckon that it’s a cop-out to lend an ear only to orators suitably licensed. Doing so is an excuse not to do some thinking of your own. It behooves a person to look at the larger picture, especially if that picture paints itself as the largest one extant.
Ideas can induce change. Generally, people avoid change, and with good reason. A change is not always for the better. Mutations are one form of change, and their effect is more often detrimental than beneficial. You don’t often hear of cancer having a positive outcome.
But some of us are addicted to ideas. We keep exposing ourselves to their danger because occasionally, perhaps once in a million, a mutation results in an improvement. That’s the one I’m after. I accept the risk, because I trust myself to evaluate a mutational idea’s worth. I’ll happily sort through an unpromising bunch to come up with a winner.
For me to rate an idea highly, it needs to be something that improves my life. It needs, in other words, to be applicable and practical. I need to be able to utilize or consume it on a daily basis. According to Jung, “Philosophy butters no parsnips,” so I’ll stake out my area of research as Applied Philosophy and see what grows in that garden.
The best ideas lead me to some mental construct that helps to explain, clarify, or tie disparate threads together. I’m on the hunt for anything and everything that assists me in making sense of the world. To me, there’s nothing finer than to come up against—unless that be to come up with—a brand new idea. That's the main reason that I read. That's what I live for.
And by that I don’t mean that I’m after ‘the latest thing’ per se. It’s not about titillation. For me, the novelty of an idea does not lie in its newness. I couldn’t care less it it’s up-to-date and on TV, or if the ancient Greeks were the last ones to fool around with it. My only requirement is that it needs to have impact—that’s how I sift the wheat from the chaff. The sort of idea I value must have the potential to affect how I live in and relate to the world. I’m in the market for ideas that force me to see things in a different light.
But at the same time, you’ve got to beware. Ideas that have the power to infect your world view are dangerous medicine. They bring about transformations that may single you out from the crowd. They awaken you from the consensus trance. They’ll earmark you as being different, and to stand out invites being cut down.
Say that you stumble across a piece of evidence that doesn’t gel with what you know. If it doesn’t sit comfortably within your world view, what do you do? If you want to be honest with yourself, you've got to be prepared to evolve and grow. Don’t ever insist that your current framework it is set in stone. Don’t ever go along with a person or belief system that is similarly inflexible.
If a person is positive that they are right, then they’ll act as though they’re guarding something valuable. Using James Howard Kunstler’s term, the psychology of previous investment makes them feel obliged to defend the status quo. Also, because you’ll never hear unbiased information in an advertisement, you should only listen to humble souls—if that is the way you’ve chosen to go, rather than figuring it out for yourself—who express their uncertainty, or at the very least in other ways demonstrate that they are not attached to their kit-bag of thinking.
The thread that runs throughout my life is thinking. I'm a thinker, and have been one for as long as I can remember. If I have to wear a label, give me the one that reads ‘Philosopher’. Or maybe ‘Adventurer-philosopher’. That’s the field where I’d probably feel most at home: applied philosophy, or maybe do-it-yourself metaphysics. Since the earliest age, I’ve been preoccupied with gaining a clearer understanding of the nature of the universe, my relationship to it, and the meaning of life. To quote Einstein, “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
Did you squirm a little in your seat? If someone tells you that they regard themselves as a philosopher, you want to make sure of their sanity, right. But you can’t come out and ask, ‘Are you insane?’ That’s rather gauche. It’s also rather hard to answer. I regard it as a catch-22 type of inquiry requiring a catch-22-category response.
I am insane in the sense that I don’t go along with group thinking. That would be my short reply. Because what is it to be ‘insane’? Simply, that you don't think in the way that most other people do. And in that sense I fall into that pigeonhole (you have to watch out for them).
But hang about, you answer. That reasoning is faulty. Surely, since all of us are individuals, doesn’t everyone see things in a different light? Since there are as many ways of seeing things are there are colours and sentient beings (Thom’s six billion answers), how can you claim distinction on that score?
Yes, I see what you mean. I'd go along with you, except for the the fact that everyone else does—‘go along’, that is. People follow the crowd, you can’t deny. They think not as individuals but as as a pack. Consensus thinking is what defines them. Pack mentality s what they indulge in. So, by virtue of the fact that most people hide from one another—and from themselves—what they really feel, I’d say that they are the insane ones. To defer to the group as a matter of course is really insane.
No, but hey. That's being unfair. You ought to redefine the definition. How about: If one or a few dissenters differ from the majority view, where the majority view is more-or-less accurately represented, then it’s fair—is it not?—to label them insane.
So . . . if you are the odd man out in a conscientious-objector type of situation, say as a citizen in Nazi Germany, are you then insane to resist the mob-thinking of the Jew-haters around you? And another example: if you are the first scientist to challenge a hypothesis that everyone believes in as a Law—for example, that the Earth is round and not flat—is it reasonable for others to dismiss you as insane? That would rather stimmy the spirit of scientific inquiry, wouldn’t you say, and shut down research and original thinking.
Insanity—inschmamity. When all’s said and done, there’s no such beast. Without exception, everyone acts in a manner that is rational and sensible within the context of their background, genes, world view and what have you.
A man once contacted a large number of celebrities, sportsmen, stars and famous people. “How do you achieve success in life?” he asked them, and then later collated their responses into a book. Charles J. Acquisto’s Wisdom to Grow On basically boils down to:
- Continuously grow and educate yourself by reading and listening.
- Actively engage with life by persevering or striving.
- Focus on small steps in your day-to-day living—use time wisely, in other words.
- Work on maintaining harmonious relationships through love and honesty.
- Work towards a greater good in the form of a religion, cause, dream or personal goal.
- Stay happy by maintaining a positive attitude.
- Accept everything that comes your way, and don’t take yourself too seriously.
- Be the change that you would like to see.
Most of this advice is what you’d expect. None of it particularly moved my earth, but there was nothing that you’d argue with.
The strongest message that came through, though, was the exhortation to be true to your self. ‘Live authentically’ spelled out letter after letter. Only then, the respondents insisted, will a person be serene. Only then, as Anne Wilson Schaef puts it, will you be “in tune with your own inner guidance, awareness, integrity, spirituality and morality”. It’s good to demonstrate who one is by doing what one loves and is drawn to. ‘Dare to be different. Dare to be your deeper self.’
I find it ironical that people need to be told to be themselves. Sea anemones don’t. Salmon don’t. Even our pets need little instruction. It just goes to show how thoroughly our behavior and thinking is pervaded from without. On the one hand we live in an age of information, but on the other there’s obviously a clear and present need for us to learn how to ignore most of it.
I’ll illustrate the above with an example that may be trivial, but it makes the point. One of the ways in which I resist the pressure of my peers is by not wearing footwear. I wouldn’t say exactly that it’s a matter of ‘integrity, spirituality and morality’, but when I march barefooted, I’m step to the tune of my inner drum.
And then society sticks in its oar. “Where are your shoes?” I get asked. How strange! I don’t ask what colour underwear they have on, and so I reply, “Don’t worry, I always wear shoes . . . whenever it’s necessary.”
Really, though, footwear isn’t the issue. What people really want to know is why you are behaving in an unconventional manner. Who does that person think he is to be bucking the system? He’s a threat. It’s our job to get him back into line.
I behave differently to most other people because I must. I insist on doing so. Aside from the reason that it’s fun to provoke a reaction, I must be myself. I behave differently because I think differently. It’s as simple as that. And I bare my toes as fair warning: man with a mind of his own approaching.
