The Limits of Thought

 

Shadbush in bloom

Sparkill, April 2022

April 25, Sparkill.

27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Matthew 6: 27-29

The other day, a friend sent an extremely dense and intricately argued proposition regarding the attitudes of Westerners towards eastern theater, and the implicit prejudices that Westerners bring towards everything they view from other cultures.

The piece was argued well enough, but it was of an intellectual density and complexity typical of academics. Some people are quite attracted to this; and yet it occurred to me at once on reading it that it had nothing to do with the real human condition, with what we are or how we act. This is a complaint that my daughter had about getting her PhD in English; she went to brown, so she was at a higher level of academia than the average student to begin with. Her observation was that academia was wrapped up in a bubble universe of its own, filled with incredibly dense arguments that no one else was interested in. It had nothing to do, she concluded, with the real world.

This led me to, of all things, some thoughts about the density of thought in general. I believe the quotation from Matthew is an illustration of the fact that Christ Himself thought about such matters. Human beings get lost in arguments and their density; and they never see it happening.

In order to understand this better, let's understand it from a new point of view. Think of the digestive system. 

Of course you are going to ask what the digestive system has to do with thinking. It’s not just an analogy we bring in to play here; because the digestive system does an enormous amount of thinking, only on a scale so small that it's inaccessible to us in our present state. The digestive system consists of countless smaller organisms (bacteria in our gut) chemically interacting with our nervous system by exuding various signaling molecules; and our gut, taking cues from what is present in that environment, makes a series of incredibly complicated decisions, molecule by molecule, about what needs to be absorbed from the food that is eaten and taken into the body proper, versus what Hass to be discarded.

It is very safe to say that if we had to think that process through in our level, it would prove to be impossible. We couldn't feed ourselves, and we would die. Yet that kind of thinking is completely unavailable to us; although we can make microscopic decisions in the sense of the gross bulk of foods we eat, thinking and decision making on the microscopic level, which has a density and complexity far beyond the capabilities of our intellectual mind as we know it, is frankly impossible.

This illustrates in a rather simple way that there are densities of thought completely inappropriate to us, densities to which we should not aspire.

The matter leaves me with the following impressions about human thought and the nature of complexity as we encounter it in ordinary life:

1. Human beings often try to think of what need not be thought of at all.

2. Thinking of what should not be thought of is unproductive and actually leads nowhere.

3. Knowing what to think of should be an essential component of human thought.

I shall speak first of this last, because it is perhaps the most critical element within focus here. Human beings don't know what to think of; they think automatically, without any direction, and follow every associative lead the moment it comes up. That's because thought is programmed randomly, much like the search pattern of ants when they are seeking food. It follows short paths in random directions and makes decisions on which way to go based on a simple stimulus/response mechanism wired into the emotions and physical sensation. Unless there is a supervisor, it thus tends to produce randomized results that, once organized, appear to have a logic and a structure to them. But because of the randomized origins of this thought, the structures themselves are actually random and may produce just about anything you like. This is why human beings come up with so many wild fantasies disconnected from truth or any objective reason.

In order to counteract this unproductive and ultimately destructive way of thinking – I say destructive, because it too often produces aberrant thought patterns that cause violence and harm to others — one must know what to think of. And this involves an exercise from within the demands a critical mind, that is, a mind that refuses to accept the obvious and acknowledges its tendency towards random thinking. Hence Gurdjieff’s adage, "If you do not have by nature a critical mind, your staying here is useless." What he does not say – but should have – is that it is not the minds of others one needs to critique, but rather one's own mind. This is the essential action in knowing what to think of.

Generally speaking, a human being needs to reach the age of about 40 years or so before they have gathered enough material to begin to contemplate what one should think of, as opposed to what one does think of. Even then, it can take a number of years to begin to know what to think of. In undertaking this process, it is first necessary to identify what should not be thought of; and this, actually, consists of most of what we "think” of. Close examination will reveal that much of what we believe we are thinking of is actually garbage. 

These very dense fields of academic thought our a good example of that; they mount incredibly impressive, complex arguments about various matters and present them as though the world turned on them. The intricate nature of these thoughts, the turns of phrase they employ and the crevices they explore tend to act as an elaborate form of ballet that draws the attractive viewer in. I say “attractive viewer” because, of course, many are not so attracted by this… and it is of course the ones that are we are discussing here, although everyone actually engages in this density of thought in one way or another. Seeing them for what they are, it is possible to see them as falling in to category number two, thinking about things that should not be thought of.

In order to understand this question of what should not be thought of, a primary corollary appears. It is as follows:

Polarities can never be resolved by arguments about their nature.

I bring this up because the majority of dense thought and argument originates in polarity and emerges from it bias in one direction or another, attempting from the very beginning to prosecute an assault upon the opposing proposition. Mankind has absolutely founded its societies, governments, and legal systems on this premise. 

Yet the dysfunction within these institutions originates with our mistaken thinking about polarity and the assumption that it can be resolved by thought and argument– which is the point of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, or at least the quoted section of it. What he says there is absolutely critical in regard to this matter; and yet it appears to be a short one off unworthy of great contemplation.

Let's come around to premise number one, that human beings are constantly trying to think of what ought not be thought of. 

Why does this happen?

Hoping that you find yourself in good relationship today,

warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.