I was once told by a yoga instructor that every man only has a max of ten original thoughts, with the average being five or six. Every thought can be traced back to those originals, and outside of that we don’t get any new thoughts.
I’ve since wondered about my own thoughts and tried to trace out my originals. The results aren’t very encouraging. Undercreative is an understatement. I even have the same story that I daydream about each night, even though I write stories that may or may not have anything to do with it, which is probably a good thing as it’s a pretty terrible, uncreative story. Though I wonder what that story says about me.
Or what my other thoughts mean. I can lead them back to my religion, my family, my career as a writer, forays into dissecting people and the purpose of social customs, my own self-progress, my anxiety, and ways to better organize and achieve prosperity in my life. I probably went too vague or broad, because a lot of the things I think about other people think about too, and if I didn’t think about them I’d be a sad person indeed. But yeah, not poignent thoughts about, uh…waterfalls or why green is the basic color for movie beginnings–when they give the ratings and stuff–crap, that leads back to dissecting social customs.
See what I mean?
Which makes whoever came up with this philosophy sound like a super know-it-all of human nature. He probably even had a list of the ten thoughts that all other thoughts boiled down to, along with a little saying about how shallow the minds of most men are and how we should choose to be better today. >O
But the thing about smart crap like this is that you get so caught up trying to understand it and thinking it’s smart and deep and following the train of thought they want you too that you forget to stand back and, well, look at it like a satirist. For example, what if I tried to come up with ten basic thought subjects that could be connected to all human thought?
- Peeing
- Pooping
- Eating
- Sex
- Sleeping
- Money
- Family
- Religion
- Entertainment
- How they need to exercise more because, my ‘lanta, have you looked in the mirror lately?
Bam. And I could probably come up with more, which sorta defeats the purpose. I’m supposed to organize it into neat little categories. For example, the first five could be included in physical needs. And I’m sure whatever that guy came up with sounded all deep and awesomer by far, but my point is:
We need to stop thinking so much.
Which sounds really weird because we’re always watching others and wondering if they were thinking at all, or how different their life would be if they just thought a little bit more. Intelligence is held as the keystone of our society, one of the most admirable traits you can have, but there is a point where the most intelligent person in the world can actually all roll down to a little old grandma who spends her days baking bread and telling her grandchildren to not count their chickens before they hatch.
Great philosophies and ideas more often than not can all be wound down to a simple, single truth. I’ve often come to find, in my deconstruction, that I’m trying to be, well, too smart. It’s often why I miss things that come so easy to, say, children or other adults who have the ‘not thinking so much’ down pat. It gives me a serious boost in hard, critical thinking classes and science, but when it comes to the simple truths that make up happiness, like pet cats and chocolate, I am lost. Great lectures are always based off of a simple thesis. Stories are sold by a sentence or two long hook, or pitch, and God wrote down His instructions in ten commandments.
The danger to getting so caught up in ‘trying to be smart’ or trusting the intelligence of others more than we should is that it makes us vulnerable to being persuaded by those who have a master over the human language. Trust me, after studying persuasive essays for four years (that’s freaking all they ask for in college–research my butt), you find out pretty quick that, with the right words, you can persuade anyone that anything is good, logical, even the more natural way. And to people who are tempted to indulge their guilty pleasures anyways, they just eat it right up. You don’t even have to try.
The phrase I really love is “science says” or “research has discovered.” If enough people say the word science or repeat the same fact, the more true it seems to become.
Oh, and there’s always the quoting of ‘this one great personage who was really smart and did lots of cool stuff’ too.
I’m not saying that science doesn’t come out with amazing discoveries. I’m not saying that all world leaders of thought and countries have it wrong. I’m saying we are too quick to think too much of them, or about them. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is just to step back, turn off your brain, and go back to simple stuff you already know. Sometimes we need to depend more upon our own strength and our own reason more than others. Sometimes we allow ourselves to be caged in by the ‘five original thoughts.’ Who ever said original was bad anyways?
So go out and stop thinking for yourself today. *wink* …wait, that came out wrong. Whatever, don’t do as I say, unless you want to, or it’s what you were thinking anyways–though that means you think I’m smart if you do–wait, I’m getting all mixed up, what was I talking about?
….screw it, I’m watching Digimon.
Author T.S. Lowe 