VOLUME 5 : OVERTHINKING
Published on the second Sunday of every month.
To think or not to think. To think of not thinking? What about to not think of thinking, or not think of not thinking, or think of thinking? It doesn’t really matter how you say it, because I have bad news for you: You’re thinking.
I looked up some statistics on thinking, and boy they delivered:
People have around 6000 thoughts a day.
80% of most people’s thoughts are negative.
Around 90% of most thoughts are repeats.
65% of people think that they’re smarter than everyone else.
As you can see, thinking is a tool that we have not quite figured out yet. Let’s dive into this a little, and perhaps, screw in a few lightbulbs.
WHOSE BRIGHT IDEA WAS IT TO START THINKING?
Good question. Let me tell you a story.
It was a balmy day in Athens, 339 BCE or so. Socrates was walking around (probably hoping someone wasn’t going to randomly stick a finger up his butt - see last months newsletter for more information), and he had thought to himself, “I feel like stirring up some major shit today.” And so he did.
You see, nothing hurts someone’s feelings as much as insulting their intelligence. On that balmy day, Socrates had busted out some serious Socratic method, and did just that.
“I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day... for the unexamined life is not worth living.”
To be honest, I have no idea what he’s trying to say here. Whatever it was, it did the trick. He pissed everyone off and was promptly sentenced to death.
The irony? Life without thinking or self-inquiry isn’t worth living. Simply following custom, mindlessly going with the grain, just doing what you're told to do without questioning, is not truly living. Philosophy isn’t optional, it’s how we live meaningful lives.
But also, thinking too much can piss people off and get you killed.
Welcome to humanity, enjoy your visit.
I THINK, THEREFORE I DON’T
Don’t get too comfortable with what you think you know, here comes Zhuangzi, the Daoist philosopher. This guy was determined to one-up everyone’s reality. It’s hard enough to think critically all the time, but questioning the rationality of being rational? At the same time, most of his stories were dreams about talking trees, conversations between fish that think they’re birds, and some guy with really long arms. There’s no way Zhuangzi wasn’t riding the psilocybin train.
Anyhow, you’re probably asleep right now. Dreaming of me.
What do you expect from philosophers? Too much thinking, not enough bricklaying. The fine line between brilliant and bat-shit bonkers, it’s sort of like diarrhea. Think about it.
PAINTING YOURSELF INTO A CORNER WHILE BURNING THE MIDNIGHT OIL OVER SPILLED MILK
What’s the point of brains, anyway? Let me tell you.
Spiders have their little spinnerets to make webs, dung beetles have weird spiky poop-ball-rolling legs, and humans have an excitable blob of electrified fat in their heads that tells stories and makes good use of all that free time spent in transit.
If you can no longer bear the thought of talking to yourself in your own head, you can always have a great conversation with someone else. Humans with their big gooey frontal lobes have cultivated the art of conversation well beyond that of any other species. Or have they?
THE EVOLUTION OF NOTHING CHANGES
There was a time when we were just letters on the periodic table.
Sure, we hadn’t lost sleep wondering what colour the bathroom should be, but we still had to deal with shit. Like the apocalyptic Oxygen Catastrophe, for example. Imagine, all of your anaerobic friends, trying not to breath, dying. Why!? How could life be so cruel? What’s the point of any of this? Where was Søren Kierkegaard’s soothing perspective of existential dread when you needed it?
Sure, add some intellectual embellishment, but nothing much has changed. Life was complicated enough, now we also sit around contemplating why it’s complicated.
In the big picture, thinking is just a blip. A characteristic. An anatomical specialization. Thinking might stick around, it might not. The important thing is surviving this whole ordeal, and somehow, in some absolutely impossible-to-rationalize way, thinking is suppose to help us with that.
Anyhow, is that a purple duck?
Still confused? It’s ok, humans are clever. So clever, we have created tiny artificial super-brains that fit into our pockets to outsource all that hard work!
Memory? No problem, just hit save. Sense of direction? Move over North, we have Google Maps. Curiosity and imagination? That’s what TikTok is for!
Thousands of negative thoughts on repeat every day be damned. Definitely evolving.
RUINING DRAGAN’S PHOTOS
Like Tibetan pebble art, nothing lasts forever. Everything is in a constant state of flux and change. Impermanence is the only truth. How inspiring! Time to get destructively philosophical on one of Dragan’s photos.
THE ORIGINAL
NEW AND RUINED
You can see more of Dragan’s photography, untainted by my hand, on his official Instagram page.
DON’T THINK ABOUT IT, HARDER
I don’t know about you, but my brain hurts. Lobotomy is always on the table, but hold on, put the big spike and hammer down, there is an alternative.
Pour yourself a glass of wine, sit down on a cozy looking rock, and shut the fuck up. It’s ok. You’ll be ok.
If you want to be cool at parties, name drop this newsletter. All the cool philosophers are doing it. Sure, it will backfire. You’ll be shamed, shunned, end up poor and spending your days mindlessly babbling to yourself in an old wine barrel. No one ever said being clever was a good idea.