Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!enea!sal!dk
From: dk@sal.UUCP (Danny Kohn)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: language, thought, and culture
Message-ID: <619@sal.UUCP>
Date: 19 Mar 88 15:54:33 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2894@pbhyf.UUCP> <888@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <326@thirdi.UUCP> <899@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <5776@dhw68k.cts.com>
Reply-To: dk@sal.UUCP (Danny Kohn)
Organization: Objecta, Taby, Sweden
Lines: 50

I doubt your hypothesis that some people are smarter than other people.
Also I cannot see what's desirable with a ability to "think every
thought ever thunk".

What we are after here, it seems, is to generate a phenomenon we
can call breakthrough thinking. The thing about breakthroughs
is that it contains thoughts or collections of thoughts never thought
before. When we listen to these new thoughts we evaluate them and have our
oppinions about them. But because the thought are so new our limited
understanding of the new thoughts make these judgements very risky. Very
often our ego, i.e. our thrownness to be right and to know better, hinders
us to see clearly what somebody else sees.

Thinking seems to me to be rather automatic. My brain processes, thinks.
Some of the thinking am I awhare of. I listen to the thinking going on
(and call it that I'm thinking). But if I actually am thinking, i.e.
be in control tf the thoughts, I would easely be able to stop the
thinking. And everybody who ever tried to stop thinking knows that it is
very difficult to control the thinking process. You can control it by deep
meditation or by drougs but as soon as you stop the meditation or
the droug effect is whereing off the thinking starts all over again.

Also most thinking is done in a conversation. I have an inner
conversations with myself, a discussion. It is like somebody is
speaking and somebody is listening and the inner speaker and the inner
listener change ( as in an outward conversation). If you want to
test this just sit on a chair, relax, and just listen to the
conversation going on inside you. Notice that you are listening to
this conversation. "I wonder what he is talking about. I don't beleive
it. But maybe he is right. What wonderful whether we have today. I should
really be doing something useful today. My thinking cannot be automatic.
that's obscure. Well he must be a nut. Wonder if I should call Lisa
today. I'm hungry. I should really do something useful now. Wonder
what I should start with. Cleaning maybe. No, that can wait. No,
i take a shower. Is it warm today? I better check. Wonder what cloth
I should wear. On and on and on and on and on. It never stops.

Breakthrough thinking has to do with being interested (my concept).
If one is interested enough in something, something that is very
meaningful and important to oneself, in some unexplainable way
the thought are more focused around that subject. And when
the thoughts, our awareness, focus around something, we start to observe
things in a new way. We start to see things we have not seen before.

People who are brekthrough thinkers seem to be able to dedicate
themselfes to a subject so that it becomes absolutly essencial for
them to work with it.

Then we have the whole area of intuition but I must leave now. Sorry.
/Love Danny