fewer, better thoughts

by James Hugonin

My experience of the world is that I have very few thoughts, and I could probably stand to have fewer. This drives my friends insane because they’re all pretty neurotic, and tend to believe that in order to find the best thoughts, you must literally have every thought. The reason why I disagree is related to that line about how being intelligent doesn’t make you more correct, it makes you better at convincing yourself that you’re correct. My general sense is that making the right decision involves paying careful attention to the state of the world around you, and the state of your own internal landscape. If you’re seeking reality, I think you’re most likely to find it through sustained neutral observation. It’s like that Da Vinci anecdote about how how he drew a terrifying realistic dragon by just staring at a lizard day in and day out. Everyone else had access to lizards, but no one was looking at them the same way. They were committed to established ways of seeing.