Ways of thinking

"...set out with the avowed object of guiding [people] ... into more constructive ways of thinking about the topic."

This quote is taken from Adam's Tongue, a book on the evolution of language by Derek Bickerton. He's talking about a paper published in a scientific journal, but when I read this this morning, the blue sky blueblueblue above my bed, the sunlight playing in the forest, it struck me that this is what the best writing does, and the best films and the best art:

They show us more constructive ways of thinking.

Perhaps it's by example—think In Cold Blood or prettymuch anything by Clive James. Or perhaps it's by evidence, sometimes self-contradictory evidence, like Catcher in the Rye or The Bell Jar or, since you're probably thinking, Jesus, can you pick anything else from the year 11 English reading list?, A Burnt Out Case or The Weekend.

Good writing shows us what we can't see in ourselves, and the world. It brings pieces of life to light, into focus, and then makes sense of them for us.

More constructive ways of thinking are to be pursued. This is not to suggest that there are Officially Constructive and Officially Unhelpful ways of thinking, but that if you're stuck on something, and you can't move forward with it, there is bound to be a more constructive way of thinking about it, if only you take the time to look elsewhere, and to look with an open mind.

Adam's Tongue also has a lot to say about thought and language, about online thinking (concentrating on a task at hand) and offline thinking (daydreaming or thinking about something that isn't in the here and now).

This discussion made me see differently the pop-culture notion of "mindfulness", and wonder if perhaps the reason I feel so at ease, so much freedom, when doing something physical that requires concentration in the here and now is because this is where we began—this is the most basic, and oldest way we think.

Maybe imagining and abstraction are hard—taxing, engrossing, entrapping, painful—because these kinds of thoughts were acquired later, when language came about, and we need to expend more energy on them to make them happen. Maybe we're not as adept—or comfortable, or skilled—with offline thinking as we like to tell ourselves, and as our creative capabilities would have us believe.

Maybe. Who knows? In any case, it's an interesting way of thinking about imagination and abstract thought. And one gleaned through reading good writing.