Or cage imagination?
Let thoughts run free
Across wild speculation
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Why chain your dreams Or cage imagination? Let thoughts run free Across wild speculation |
| date | 2001-001-15:13:18 |
| SelfConciousness |
I have no difficulty at all contemplating half a dozen impossible things before breakfast. Nor after breakfast, neither. This is a really important aspect of my character that causes me sometimes to be seen as a monster. People tend to assume that because you are capable of thinking something, then you're not only capable of doing it but actually very likely to do it. There's a simple logical fallacy involved: A->B does not entail A<->B: simply because no one ever does anything without thinking about doing it, does not mean that everyone who thinks about something, does it. When people find out that I'm willing to merrily contemplate impossible things there are two basic reactions: disgust and ridicule. Digust is the reaction I get from people who don't think that anyone should think in certain ways about human behavior, the sort of people who think that Swift was immoral to write something as beastly as A Modest Proposal, even in satire. Ridicule is the reaction I get from the prematurely certain, the people who know what's possible and what isn't, and aren't interested in what isn't, period. But it's really important to me to live my life with the brakes off my mind, with nothing forbidden. It's really important, because it's the only way I know of to find the boundaries of the possible. Anyone can contemplate the possible. I'm interested in people who can contemplate the impossible. But they have to do so intelligently. For me, there are three levels of contemplation: speculative, investigative, and active. On the speculative level, in the best Feyrabendian fashion, anything goes. No idea to silly, no proposal too modest. This is possible because speculation is fun and cheap. All I have to do is dream. Why put any boundaries on that? On the investigative level, there's some effort involved, so a bit of judgement is called for. Some things are just too much work and too unlikely to offer interesting returns to be worth investigating. Other people's kooky ideas are like this--if someone has a crazy idea that'll change the world, I'll hear about it and learn about it when it changes the world. The truth is robust, and people who have ideas that will make a big difference, will make a big difference. So unless it's something I'm already interested in, I tend to be pretty conventional when investigating what other people are thinking, unless it's just for fun. In my own thinking, I'm motivated by interest as much as the chance that the investigation will ultimately develop into anything conventionally useful. So I'm willing to follow up all kinds of crazy possibilities for theory and practice even though I don't think its likely that the theory will ever hold water or that the practice will ever be something I'd want to do. On the active level, moral considerations come into play. Most people let morals considerations limit their speculative and investigative thinking. They don't think about stuff they'd never do. It does cut their costs--I have spent time solving problems whose solutions I will never put into effect, and if I'd been more conservative I would have said, "No, this is a problem I'd rather not see solved." But then, I would never have had the pleasure of solving them. And who knows--maybe I'll one day find myself in a situation where the solution will be useful and not involve me in anything unethical. I've touched the edges of the military-industrial complex closely enough to have been tempted by its doubtful charms, and so I know how seductive it can be to be tempted to do something that is morally repugnant. But I don't think the risk of giving in to such tempatation is something that ought to limit the thinking of a mature adult, because ideas are not generally useful only for destruction--they can often be turned to better uses as well. So although my willingness to contemplate the impossible in both theory and practice has cost me many idle hours, it has also benefitted me tremendously. It has taught me why some things are impossible, in deep and unconventional ways. And on a few rare occassions it has taught me that something I'd thought was impossible is possible, and that is worth all the effort combined. On a practical basis, it's taught me the value of contemplating remote possibilities--considering how I would act in situations that are very unlikely to come up. People often misinterpret this kind of thinking, and believe it means that I think some fairly unlikely scenarios are probable, because they are in the habit of only thinking about what they deem to be likely. But I'm not in that habit, nor should any safety-conscious person be: thinking about how I'd act in unlikely situations teaches me about me, and on at least one occasion one of those unlikely situations actually occured, and I think I was able to deal with it a little better because I'd thought the unthinkable before. So let your imagination go and your thoughts flow free. Don't be afraid to think the unthinkable. Don't be afraid that people will laugh at you for taking ideas seriously that they think are obviously wrong. Don't be afraid to wonder what it would be like to do things that it's pretty unlikely you'll ever do. You'll learn from it. Have fun. |
| Reading |
The thing I love about Gully Foyle, in Bester's The Stars My Destination is how driven he is. He has a single, obsessively pursued goal: to destroy the Vorga and the person who commanded it. Everything else about him is subordinate to that. It isn't a good way to be, but it makes him comprehensible in a way that most people aren't. He's the reductio ad absurdem of the motivated individual; a Napoleon or Lenin whose goal is not social change but revenge. It also clearly shows the cost: friendship, trust and love are all completely lost on him. He doesn't even have enemies in the usual sense--just people who can or cannot help him move toward his goal. He's a schematic of a human being, reduced to essentials, but still, just, recognizably human. |