Let me
start with a thought. A philosophical thought. A thought so simple, it’s hard
to believe how much power it has on us. In fact this thought is the start and
end of all our problems. Here goes: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by their opinions about them.”
(Epictetus).
Everything
is a matter of perception. How we see something affects us more than what that
thing actually is. Reality is in fact no scarier than how we think about it.
Men
(and women) are controlled not so much by the turmoil around them but by the
turmoil within them. I know this is basic self-help 101. But this is the irony.
That dismissive phrase, that is, “Isn’t
this all basic self-help 101?” is itself no less a thought that has influenced
us in more ways than one - that dismissive attitude towards it.
Nothing has escaped our mind to think about things, and to subsequently allow what we think think
for us. This post is about the latter phrase - "allowing what we think think for us." This is the main reason why we sleepwalk through our life by allowing one
thought to control all other thoughts. That is also why Socrates kept reminding us
to live an examined life, always.
But
alas, the issue with us is not that we live an unexamined life. The issue is that we allow one dominant (even oppressive) thought to do the examination for us. In other
words, we see the world through the lens of just one thought. We are
brainwashed by it. We exercise extreme prejudice in its favour. This is the start of the tyranny of an idea. A start of a
predestined end. An end predestined by one thought.
Socrates
once defined philosophy as “reflection on
propositions emerging from unreflective thought.”
Sometimes,
we are given to the delusion that we are actually thinking. But this remains a
delusion because we remain slaves to our own unconscious habits. And all
unconscious habits, by default, are left to be fortified (or perpetuated) by lack of continual mental
scrutiny. It is the “One thought” to
rule the others like Sauron’s ring.
So, we go
on autopilot mode most of the time. Decisions are already made for us before we
even make them, and the delusion that makes us think that we are actually
thinking does well to effectively keep us from thinking about our own thinking; that is, to do a Socrates' type of mental spring-cleaning of all and sundry.
We are
all too familiar with the seed concept. We know that a thought is a harmless
seed. We are actually bombarded by thousands of them everyday. But what escapes
us is the fact that a seed doesn’t remain a seed for long. Some dies off no
doubt. But others are selected for growth. And those that grow, grow for
attention.
Like
creepers, they form a mental citadel and sieve through all thoughts that
nourish it, and reject all thoughts that don’t. That becomes our default mental
position. Soon, we become selective in our thinking, in words and in deeds,
without even knowing that we were selective about them. This is the insidious
growth of what is known as the confirmation
bias.
Let me
offer an example, a real life example. Here is his seed of a thought that has
grown via constant nourishment, and its recursive hold goes like this:-
“There is a part of me that used to think
that I am smarter, better whatever, that nearly made me die.”
Sadly,
the author of that quote committed suicide. His name is David Forster Wallace.
He was an award winning American novelist, an admired professor and was called
“one of the most influential and
innovative writers of the last 20 years.” (Los Angeles Times book).
Wallace
suffered from depression for more than 20 years and was on anti-depressant
drugs. On 12 September 2008, at 46 years old, he went into his garage, left a
two-page note, and hung himself on the patio.
Of
course, there is more than meets the eye here. His death may be genetic,
environmental, drugs-related, or a combination of all that. I do not want to oversimplify it all.
But Wallace
was also a highly intelligent thinker. He thought his way out of religion and
into a form of nihilism that some may call “individualist
autonomy” or “metaphysical
individualism.” It is more akin to Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, an Above-Human, a Superman, Superhuman.
In the
book, All things shining, the authors
Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly wrote this about the tragedy of Wallace’s
death, and the irony of his quest for perfection by the sheer might of his own
brilliant mind:-
“Perhaps
the saddest part of Wallace’s story is that the human qualities he aspired to,
the capacities of spirit that he revered and coveted, are a mirage. Indeed the
entire mode of existence that he castigated himself for not being strong enough
to achieve, far from being the saving possibility for our culture, is in fact a
human impossibility. Wallace’s inability to achieve it was not a weakness, but
the deep and abiding humanness in his spirit.”
Amongst other contributing causes, the
quest for and the futility of perfection finally drove Wallace to his grave.
And this is the same person who once said this about taking control of your
thoughts:-
“Twenty
years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand
that…learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control
over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to
choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from
experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life,
you will be totally hosed.”
The tragedy here is that the same thought (of pursing perfection) that liberated
Wallace for a season might well be the same one that took his life in another.
He was eventually controlled by the one thought that drove him to see the
meaninglessness of it all. I guess it would be what Wallace would describe as being “totally hosed”.
Now, it
can’t be denied that we are constantly being bombarded by thoughts running helter skelter within us. Some may think
that their mind is a fortress, surrounded by a moat of metal resistance, and
locked in the center by an impregnable forest of cerebral fauna and flora. We
stake full control over it. We think we do.
But
that is a delusion of control we all suffer from. Our entrenched bias shuts out
most thoughts seeking an audience with us, seeking to change us for good. And
in some cases, it is the same bias for the protection of that one (destructive)
thought that might just drive a man to kill himself, or commit acts seemingly uncharacteristic of him, because
he becomes the summation of that thought he thought he had control over.
Take
the exceedingly pious monk Martin Luther for example. He was one devout
professor who was completely obsessed with the purity of the spirit, and any
hint of personal sin would make him scamper for the claustrophobic refuge of a
confessional. This is the thought of tyrannical religious puritanism.
It is
said, with a pinch of salt of course, that Martin Luther once kept his
confessor for six hours to hear the full recitation of his sins. Things came to
such absurdity one day that Luther’s confessor finally rebuked him, “You must
get a hold of yourself, Martin. Every time you fart you want to make a
confession of your sins…Quit coming to me with these puppy confessions,
Luther…Go kill your father or something – then we’ll have a sin to talk about.”
Let me end
here with the consoling words of Epictetus, “The robber of free will does not exist.” We are ultimately still in
control – to varying degree. And our
sphere of influence is in the thoughts that we generate to direct our words and
actions, as it is said, “a thought
produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.”
So, a little
disciplined and focused reflection will reveal why we act the way we do or say
the things we say. A little more reflection will reveal the biasness of our
deeds and words. And a little deeper we go will smoke out the first thought
that was once a seed that had over the years grown into a mental despot within
us, calling the shots.
Once that is
smoked out, the real battle of the mind begins. It is the greatest battle of our
life, and it takes place away from the external world, away from the world of
action. It is the world of our mind that will determine our fate in the world
out there. And it is our struggle within that ultimately makes or breaks us. Cheerz
