The Life of the Mind
SPECIAL NOTE: I wrote a complete draft of this article two months before George Floyd was killed. I had no idea it would be so relevant today.
This is my eighth blog since 2013 that I have posted on the day of my birthday. Birthdays have a way of making us conscious of time and the passage of time.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates
“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
Søren Kierkegaard
"I ain't no intellectual."
William Faulkner
THOUGHT AND ACTION
On a cold winter morning in New Hampshire in 1962, a visiting African-American minister took the pulpit at my mostly all white boy's boarding school. Dressed in a flowing purple robe he had been invited to deliver the Sunday sermon that day. What I heard next changed my life.
He began by paraphrasing Victor Hugo. In a clear baritone voice, he looked out over this crowd of sleepy students and began, "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has arrived. You can resist the invasion of armies, but no army can stop an idea whose time has come." Then he let the words sink in before he began again. "And today our time has come. Segregation in the south will end. It has been 100 years since the Civil War and now the Black community will wait no longer, we demand equal rights." When I heard these words, I was struck by the force of his delivery and also the notion that ideas could have such power.
I, of course, did not realize that two years later I would be attending college in the South and would be deeply involved in the Chapel Hill Civil Rights movement. Civil Rights, for me, would go from being just an idea that I had studied in my American history course to passionate action. We marched every day for four months and I was arrested in a sit-in.
So that Sunday morning this minister bridged the gap between thought and action.
Here I am in the Chapel Hill Civil Rights Movement in 1963.
I am standing on the far right, holding the pole that supported the banner. While we lost the fight in Chapel Hill and many members of the movement went to jail, we were told later that our efforts had convinced at least one US Senator to vote for the Civil Rights Bill, since it was obvious that working at the local level had failed.
LBJ signs the Civil Rights bill with Martin Luther King looking on.
A TRADITION OF THOUGHT
I came from a family where thought was important. My parents were divorced, so I spent the summers with my Dad and then the school year with my mother. My Dad was a thinker whose hero was Socrates. Hardly a day passed when his name was not mentioned or that we did not engage in a Socratic dialogue.
SOCRATIC METHOD
The Socratic method...is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
From this method, I learned to look at and investigate a question from all sides and to entertain ideas that I did not agree with. I especially enjoyed talking with people who would join me in this kind of discussion and tended to avoid people who had set opinions and wanted to convince me of their point of view.
“It is the mark of an educated mind
to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Aristotle, Metaphysics
But as a young boy, these ideas were just that, ideas. I did not make the connection between real life and my ability to discuss something in detail.
The Death of Socrates, Jacques-Louis David, 1787.
The painting focuses on...the execution of Socrates as told by Plato in his Phaedo. In this story, Socrates has been convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing strange gods, and has been sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock. Socrates uses his death as a final lesson for his pupils rather than fleeing when the opportunity arises, and faces it calmly.
But because I was brought up in this tradition and was a second-generation thinker, it became part of who I was. Thought, to me, is like food or nourishment. Without it, I starve. And today because I was brought up thinking about ideas, I find them more interesting than many other things in life.
I have, however, resisted being called an intellectual and have often quoted William Faulkner's line, "I ain't no intellectual." I would prefer to be called thoughtful. I do not believe I have a special pipeline into intelligence but I do question and explore many things. I also believe that everyone (and I mean everyone) has an important and insightful perception or story that I can learn from. So I work at being a good listener.
If I have any special talent it is that I am curious. One person said I was the most curious person they had ever met. I was delighted by the compliment, although I am not sure I deserved it. And my curiosity often leads to asking unusual questions that go beyond generally held assumptions.
For example, when I was in 8th grade a teacher was showing us the simplicity and elegance of Einstein's famous formula e=mc2, telling us that Einstein showed that matter could be converted to energy. But I felt he had left out something important. So I blurted out, "Those must be specific units in physics of matter and energy. What are they?" The teacher was dumbfounded and could not answer. Apparently, that question had never occurred to him.
My curiosity has fueled many of my thoughts because I often find a pattern in two or three very different things that I would not have discovered without a range of knowledge. So I often connect things that have not been connected before.
The trick, for me, is to ask questions that matter and not just play an intellectual game like the TV game of Jeopardy. I admire people who have a lot of knowledge, but I think they are often more like collectors of knowledge rather than users of knowledge.
For me ideas and thoughts are not just ideas and thoughts, they often led to profound changes in action and a sense of self. They also can lead to different perceptions and a different relationship to the world.
The key to a good inquiry is to ask good questions. So when I joined the Civil Rights Movement, for example, I asked myself if there was any reason that citizens of the United States should be prevented from using public places. And the answer was no, there was no reason.
In my senior year at boarding school, I read a good deal of Friedrich Nietzsche's works. His basic idea was to think independently, to think outside the box.
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche's writings helped give me the courage, for example, to question what it meant to be a man. The male stereotype at that time seemed wrong. I believed that many teenage boys were suppressing their feelings so that they would appear to be 'real men', i.e. strong and in charge. The boys who did not follow this model were considered less than masculine and often rejected. Somehow I knew this was a mistake. Years later I would write a poem about this and be able to articulate what I could not put into words back then.
________________________________________________________________
BE A MAN! (What Does That Mean?)
by Rick Doble
Like all boys I paid lip service
to this show of manliness
later I realized it was like playing
5 notes in a 12 note octave
we were denied the full range,
confined to the sounds those few notes could play
as the depth of emotional chords and complexity
were not available
we were allowed to yell at sports
or to be angry - perhaps the easiest emotions -
but sorrow or joy, hurt and affection
were off-limits
and then I saw the results:
teachers whose dead-end lives
meant they took their anger out
on boys they were mentoring,
their cruelty masked as a rite of passage
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“Our thoughts and lives are constantly interacting...we think about our lives, sometimes we change our lives because of our thoughts, and vice versa. That’s the human condition."
Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian academic
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
Confucious
ASSUMPTIONS
Many thinkers have stated that assumptions are not good. This is a misunderstanding. We could not operate or get through the day without assumptions. If we were to get rid of all of them, we would then have to deal with each moment and each situation from scratch -- which would be impossible. The point is that assumptions need to be questioned from time to time. And when examining a specific set of ideas, the assumptions need to be stated and considered.
Isaac Asimov said it best. Your assumptions are your windows through which you see the world. And without them, it would be very hard to do things every day. BUT questioning assumptions when considering ideas is necessary. The problem with assumptions is that we are usually unaware of them. Assumptions are often hidden and not obvious.
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world.
Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.”
Isaac Asimov
ASKING QUESTIONS
While investigating ideas and coming up with answers is quite satisfying, perhaps even more important are the questions that are asked. A good question will lead to a good discussion which will often involve many people. And it can lead to more good questions. Then a good question can have a life of its own and continue to be discussed for many years.
I like to think of the life of the mind as being part of a dialogue that has been going on for thousands of years. And while I cannot know how small or how large my contribution will be, I nevertheless feel that I have added something to that conversation.
DRAWBACKS
However, like any lifestyle, it has its drawbacks. On the one hand, many people assume that a person who enjoys ideas and thoughts feels that they are superior. Not so. Some people like bowling or fishing or restoring an old car, or gardening or making scrapbooks or dancing and others, such as me like ideas. And, as I have said, everyone I have met has a unique insight about something I have never thought of.
"If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"
Yogi Berra
Perhaps more troubling is that "we can't get no respect." In the United States, at least, thinkers are often seen as unrealistic and impractical.
More than fifty years ago,"George Kennan remarked...that he could think of few countries in the world “where the artist, the writer, the composer or the thinker is held in such general low esteem as he is here in our country.”
From Dawn to Decadence?
Another aspect of the life of the mind is that it can be a solitary pursuit. You will be alone much of the time. This is because it often takes solitude to work through or to hatch ideas. The Internet has been a godsend since it allows me at any hour to look up just about anything on the largest library in the world, i.e. the Web. Nevertheless, many people who deal in ideas have periods of intense loneliness and isolation.
Naturally, it would be nice to discuss ideas with others but it can be hard to find people who are open to a Socratic kind of discussion rather than people who want to argue and convert a thinker to their point of view. This is a little easier with various groups on the Web but watch out for trolls. They are know-it-alls who often know very little but love to entangle others in their twisted points of view.
THE VALUE OF THOUGHT
William Faulkner summed it up very well in his speech at the
Nobel Prize Banquet after accepting the Nobel Prize for his work.
NOTE: In Faulkner's era 'man' meant both men and women.
NOTE: In Faulkner's era 'man' meant both men and women.
"The poet’s [ED: i.e., the thinker's/writer's/composer's/artist's/etc] voice need not merely be the record of man (ED: and women), it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?...
"I decline to accept the end of man...I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things...The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
William Faulkner
Nobel Prize Banquet speech
____________________
TAKE HEED MEN OF ACTION
Mark this well,
you proud men of action!
You are, after all,
nothing
but
unconscious instruments
of the men
of thought.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
____________________
____________________
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AFTERWORD
AN EXAMPLE OF MY METHOD
When I was young and my parents were divorced I kept a collection of items in a case -- a collection that I called my museum. My Dad and Mother and others knew about this and brought me artifacts. At one point I had fossils, old stone-age tools, a neolithic ax, American Indian arrowheads, and a Roman lamp. These items made history real for me, as I could touch and examine them.
Years later in my sixties, I had two hip operations and these made me quite aware of my mortality. So while recovering in rehab, I decided to write a blog about the human experience of time. I had always wondered how the human species had become aware of the passage of time, i.e. of past, present, future, and duration, unlike any other animal. This seemed critical to me, but I could not find much research on the subject. So I began this blog, DeconstructingTime.
For those of us with ideas and looking for an audience for those ideas, the Internet is perfect. I can reach a worldwide audience and I can do extensive research before posting an article.
MY BLOG DECONSTRUCTING TIME
After 8 years and more than 100 posts, I have recorded 98,000+ pageviews from almost every country in the world. In the last five years, I have averaged 1,500 pageviews per month. In addition, my most popular posts have recorded 7800+ and 4600+ -- meaning that people deliberately went to those particular pages to read what I wrote. Most of my traffic is from outside the US; many non-English speaking countries such as Russia and France are a large audience for my work.
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/
TWO ACADEMIC SITES
I converted many of my blog posts to PDF documents which I have uploaded to two academic websites.
At academia.edu I have recorded over 13,000 pageviews and 2500+ downloads. I also have more than 400 followers and 830 readers who are 'highly engaged' meaning that they have read and downloaded a number of my documents. These people are professors, researchers, and graduate students at universities around the world.
https://unc.academia.edu/RickDoble
At the academic Figshare.com website, I have recorded 25,000+ pageviews and 11,000+ downloads.
https://figshare.com/authors/Rick_Doble/629522
THE GENIUS OF CAVEMEN
Just a few months after I started this blog about the "Human Experience of Time" in 2012, I wrote the following article about the cave paintings in the Cave of Altamira in Spain, an article that has now registered over 4600 pageviews and is my second most popular post.
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-genius-of-cavemen.html
As you know from what I wrote earlier in this post, my method often combines a number of different threads which can somehow jell into a basic idea. Such was the case with this article.
I have always been fascinated by the wonderful polychrome cave paintings by 'primitive' cavemen, especially those at Altamira because my father had been there before it was closed to the public. I knew from his description that the various paintings were well inside the cave.
One of the themes of my blog about the human-experience-of-time was the development of memory because it is partly through memory that we, as humans, are able to manage time.
This statue epitomizes the common conception of early humans. In this depiction,
they are brutes who were not very intelligent or skilled. This is an example of an assumption that has been found to be incorrect.
When thinking about Altamira, it suddenly occurred to me that the artists had to be painting from memory since they were deep inside a dark cave. After searching the Internet I was able to locate a public domain photograph of the ceiling paintings.
Next, I wanted to find a photo of a contemporary bison that was not too different from the extinct Upper Paleolithic bison that was depicted on the ceiling of the Altamira cave. And hopefully, I could find one where the bison was in about the same position so that the accuracy of the caveman's memory and drawing would be clear.
After a search of public domain photos, I was able to find such a photograph. I cropped both images so that they were about the same size and then flopped a photo so the two bison were in about the same position.
I knew how to do this because I had spent many years as a photographer. Looking for images, cropping images, and finding appropriate matching images was one of my skills.
I then put the two -- the cave painting and the modern photo -- side by side to make my case. And when viewed side by side, the viewer can see that the cave painting was a masterpiece not just of artistic skill but of accurate observation.
I think it proved that these old stone age cave artists about 13,000 years ago, had remarkable memories -- as I believe there are few, if any, modern painters who could have painted such a precise picture from memory.
I felt that the exactness of the painting proved that cave dwellers were not primitive and less accomplished as is the stereotype of brute 'cavemen' but that they were highly skilled "doing the best they could with what they had," to paraphrase the fighter Joe Louis, i.e., doing their best with the knowledge and the technology of their time period.
This is the wall of painted animals on the ceiling of the Cave of Altamira.
A contemporary bison in Europe -- similar but not the same species as those bison whose pictures were painted in the Cave of Altamira. Nevertheless, the resemblance is striking.
I was able to find the right images on the Internet and then place them so that they could be compared one-on-one with the help of some image processing. These two pictures pretty much proved my contention that the 'cavemen' at Altamira had remarkable memories and were skilled painters 13000 years ago. This blog is my second most popular posting and has registered over 4600+ targeted pageviews, meaning that people went specifically to that page to read what I had written.
ASKING A QUESTION
In a recent blog on this website, I asked a simple question that has not been addressed.
How Did a Sense of Time Develop in the Paleolithic Era?
I pointed out that we as early hominids went from an animal sense of time in the moment to our current sense of time as a continuum with a past, present, and future along with a sense of duration. This could not have been easy or simple. So how did it happen? This question must be answered if we are to understand the human condition.
Even if most of my ideas, about human evolution and the 'human experience of time' as discussed in this blog, do not bear fruit, this question will still need to be dealt with. It is an example of a question being as important, if not more important than the answer.
