Thinking is not...what you think (end)

 

Ask yourself: what do you mean by ‘Thinking about something’?

Or you can approach that from a different perspective perhaps: is a scientific discovery the result of the thinking that was taking place at the time of the discovery?

Or is the discovery an event that takes place after a whole lot of thinking was done, and when the thinking properly so-called is now unfocused?

In other words: there’s thinking-about-one-thing, and there’s thinking about a network of relations – about things in their relationship and not just as themselves. In a way, it’s the same distinction we can make between meaning and interpretation, as Lars Svendsen put it rather neatly: ‘Information and meaning are not identical. To simplify, one could say that meaning consists of assembling small parts which fit together to form a bigger whole, whereas information is the opposite’.

The act of reading is to accumulate information – then to interpret it.

It’s really the same in everyday life: often, I’ll ‘discover’ what I’m going to cook for tonight’s dinner by having considered a web of relations: how hungry I may be, what I ate yesterday, how much I feel like cooking, what I may have in the fridge or not, how much time I have (among other things I guess). All those aspects inform my thinking about what to eat, and so I’m less focused on deciding what I feel like eating (although it does happen of course). In other words, I’m less focused on thinking-about-one-thing than I am reflecting on what I know.

Of course, once I’ve decided what to eat, I will focus and I’ll think about that one thing only: which pan do I need, which herbs, the order of the recipe, when to switch the oven on and all the rest of it.

When you read, you should not start off with the idea of thinking-about-one-thing: reading is a process that accumulates things, i.e., it accumulates ideas, events, thoughts, actions, people, emotions.

Thinking about any one of those things to the exclusion of the others is the work of academics writing a paper. Thinking about all of those things together, in their inter-relations, is the work of the reader.

 Let’s pause for a second here, and remind ourselves of this acerbic comment from one of the great Art historians, Feredico Zeri: ‘In our day, there is in fact a sort of sub-culture which prefers anything that is involuted and obscure, anything that requires professional exegesis, to simplicity. [an exegesis is an explanation/critical interpretation].

These intellectuals live directly off the ignorance of the public and the obscurity of texts, so anything the masses can understand annoys them since, in the long run, it can put them out of work’.

 

Let’s not confuse hyper-focused reading and our reading – it’s not our job to obscure things. We are the mass, and we want to understand - we have a right to understand.

So clearly, well before you start thinking, you need to be aware; and to be aware, you need to be attentive and open-minded.

And that, effectively, is all you need when you read. Do the hard thinking later, once you have an idea of the whole and how different aspects interact and complete each other. Then is the time to focus on one thing or another. But while you read, there is little reason to think hard because there is no material to think with, nor to think from. That material, so essential to thinking, comes as you read.

And just like with deciding what to eat, or coming to a sudden understanding of something, there will be a great amount of thinking being done in your head, a great churning of information of all kind, that you may not even be aware of as it happens. But happens it does if you keep your eyes, ears and mind open, and that understanding of relations will lead to ideas and interpretations.

 The wonderful Canadian writer Robertson Davies once wrote that ‘The best of novels are only scenarios, to be completed by the reader’s own experience. Great numbers of people find fault with fiction because they do not give themselves a chance to respond to it’.

One reason people do not give themselves a chance to respond to it is because they think reading means thinking-about-one-thing – focused thinking. And really, what are they thinking about? The usual: what’s the meaning? What does the author mean…all things we know are not helpful.

 A last thought perhaps, as quoted by the same Robertson Davies:

‘One of the chief things we have to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of continuous hard activity: they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change – not rest, except in sleep’.

Having an open-mind, alert to the new, curious and attentive, is not hard like running a marathon, tearing down a wall, cleaning offices or working in a mine. Mental faculties are always there, and they (just) need activating, and channeling, they need material to be used on and used with. A story can be that material, feeding our faculties with sensory input of many different kinds, connecting with our knowledge and ignorance, our emotions, our past, our feelings, our identity. Once those connections start to form, thinking (reflecting, considering, pondering) will start taking place.

There’s no need to want to think as you read: open your mind, stay alert, pay attention – this way you’ll have all you need to get yourself thinking.

It doesn’t happen all at once, it’s a process, it takes time, but a lot more will happen in your brain later on if you accept that at the beginning.

Go on, open that book!

 

• Feredico Zeri: Behind the image, 1990 – very interesting, not only for the insights on painting but also because Zeri was a world specialist of fakes in painting (of identifying them, not producing them 😊)
• Robertson Davies: A voice from the attic, 1960 (first edition, there are more recent ones; if you like reading, and value it, you will LOVE this book! Davies is best-known for his novels, notably his two trilogies, absolutely recommended reading)
• Someone else in that line is of course Alberto Manguel, for example in The library at night and many others (his A History of reading is a wonderful book)
• Lars Svendsen: A philosophy of boredom, 2004 (sounds horribly boring but it’s not – and it’s very accessible. I should add that I read that book in French ('Une philosophie de l'ennui') so the quotation above is my translation)