Lunch talk

'At work, I don't feel like a human.' So said a student in this evening's class as the question-asking exercise I'd planned to reinforce their understanding of the present simple tense just took off into a discussion of work conditions. The trigger question was 'Where do you eat your lunch?'  Responses: in the car on the way to the next cleaning job, at a picnic table outside, wherever I am..., and one who worked in a restaurant said she had no time for lunch whatsoever, said her boss was continually after her to stay busy serving customers. 'I don't sit down from the time I start to the time I go home. I feel like a animal.'

From here the discussion moved to the rights of workers in American, in Massachusetts, and their recourses about which I know little (not like verb tenses). Then people piped up on American vs Hispanic bosses, until I called us all order with the next phases of the lesson.

Hard working, all 13 of these twenty/thirty somethings from Central and South America as well as Algeria and Egypt. Besides appreciating the relevance of topic, I'm delighted to see them curious about each other's experiences and making inquiries, all in English.

Outside the window, the light was eerie, bright and misty at the same time. Clouds that looked like tornado-formers sagged from the sky. But the atmosphere in the class matched it in sheer vivid energy. You guys are the reason teaching is so much fun.

On your own

Here outside on the porch in the dark, backdoor light turned off,  kitchen lights turned down, street lights blocked in part by tree leaves, the roar of traffic (somewhat) muted, motorbikers excepted.

My sister down in Washington getting ready to empty and renovate my aunt's apartment as she moves up to Connecticut to live with my mother has been sending old photo images which appear--kaching, kaching in the darkness--in my messages: me? as a  baby; my christening with mum, dad, Aunt Ann and others in front of a church; Aunt Ann as a young attractive adventuresome woman, on a ski lift, cycling across Canada.

So much I don't know about you, Aunt, and now am too shy to ask. I know you loved freedom, and hate to give it up now, but what else, or rather who else did you love?  Us, of course; you've always been loyal and generous to each of your nephews and nieces, but I confess I've been incurious about you, someone so constant in my life. You've always been private, and after all, I'm the younger generation. Maybe your siblings know and haven't spoken.

Growing up one of four in depression Glasgow, you claimed independence as soon as you could, making your own way in the world, proposing to take care of yourself, and have done so right up to just now, when, in your tenth decade, you need others nearby for backup.

 

Hardy, self-contained but with a gift for friendship, not reflective (I think) but in fact rather literal, a regular lion of reminiscence, you're now, reluctantly, leaning into the bosom of your family, led by sister and niece, ready to care for you.

These photos, sent around the country, are eliciting responses as other family  members understand the significance of the moment. The night is full of conversation about you, Aunt, and the big change you're making.

How handsome you looked and lively; indeed, the spark is still there, though banked by time. If such an upheaval, relocation after all these years and not to another place all your own, has to happen, the unearthing of these photos is something positive in the process.

Seeing you next time I visit mum.

Excursion

In the cool overcast morning, I saw the compact flotilla silent and smoothly moving as it glided up under the arched bridge over the  channel.  Coming closer and passing where I sat, the array turned into ten goslings in a line with three adult Canadian geese chaperoning. Some of the young birds were down covered and others beginning to fledge, clearly from this years first clutch. They all looked muscular and rangy.

Like a school outing, the grown geese led the gaggle out of the water and onto grassy bank where the goslings nibbled grass here and there as they moved up onto the flat lawn of the little island and out of sight. No gabbling or honking. This was a business-like field-trip.

I'm not a fan of these birds which combine filthy habits with aggressive touchinesss with a propensity for proliferation. Still, the calm demeanour of the escorts was impressive. No wonder these birds are as successful as they are; they teach their young well.

Gooseherds must exploit this kind of organization and discipline when they drive their flocks of dozens or hundreds many miles to market, and the roasting oven. 

Nova

Suddenly an oft-heard story comes alive.  It begins to glow, throb, throw off implications like solar flares, take center stage, where before it had been one of many, and no more than its bare literal self.

So I felt reading Numbers: The Universal Language by Denis Guedj in a little glossy highly illustrated book I picked up at MIT. The epiphany? The number system we use is a conceptual and practical creation: of course, but how that fact struck me. Whatever the internal logic of the system we have invented, it came about through human ingenuity.  Indeed, the adoption by the West of the Arabic numerical system in the late Middle Ages democratized arithmetic and opened up the world of practical calculation and mathematical exploration that is still, today, a work in progress.

I thought: put a simple system of working with numbers in the hands of the general public and who knows what can happen. When the abacists were replaced by the algorists, the mysteries of the universe and the power of its operations were open to anybody who could use a pencil and paper, upper class or low.

All of a sudden the system my wife struggles to teach her tutees took on the aspect of a great historical achievement. In a flash, I saw history as a process of incessant conversion of the 'not yet' into a new capability, a new presence, a new expansion of the future. So many obvious things seemed marvelous creations or discoveries: why had they not dazzled me before?

Walking the hallway today, I found book snatched away for perusal by a fellow teacher. In the conversation, I found myself sharing with others one or two simple (obvious) points that had hit me for the first time, such as: the fact that the system we use (not the only possible or historical one) correlates the length of numbers with their size, so relative scale can be assessed at a glance. Of course. It's right there, but...

I could see you, colleagues, becoming intrigued--and why not? I went to my first class of the day feeling elevated.  The day progressed; my energy level dropped; the brilliance became somewhat banal. Still, continued reading keeps stirring up the coals. Affairs needn't have been ordered the way they were, but once done, a republic of reason was established in accounting houses and classrooms.

What next? What ungainly and thought balking systems are we now struggling with that with a few flashes of genius can turn into something simple and powerful enough for quick boys or girls to use to make what has never been conceived, much less invented?  It's worth waiting to see.

Hopalong

Scrambling up the worn track through the weeds, ducking to avoid spiky branches, swinging left leg then right over the guard rail, quickly glancing downroad to see coming traffic, and across the paving stone median to see if the uproad traffic has the green light, I rush to the center, get waved on, surge forward, then catch my foot on a ripple in the asphalt and stumble in front of a line of trucks and cars.

This 'extreme jaywalking' I do because, well, it's convenient, but when I looked up yesterday at the vehicles bearing steadily down on me, I found myself falling and hopping forward at the same time, heavy bag slipping off my back to hang under my neck, my right leg, already tender, stretching at angles and under loads far beyond familiar.  'Let me not hit the ground,' I prayed.

I don't know how I managed to lurch to the other side just as the traffic zoomed by behind me. Feeling foolish, I wondered how things had gone so wrong so quickly. My right leg felt abused, perhaps torn, certainly painful. I continued my journey, limping over the bridge to the college and my car. Oh, the deep ache in my thigh meat. I must have really damaged something--what? muscles, joints surely.

In the course of the evening's class, the pain subsided, and even more as I slept (after ibuprofen); even today, leading a walking tour, there was no flare-up, no revived discomfort.

Why do I find this fascinating? (Fascinating: what I can't look away from or stop looking back at.) The suddenness and intensity of the event must have meant disaster, and I was fatalistic about the inevitable (and well-deserved) consequences I'd suffer. There would be a price, I was sure--and yet there wasn't. I was given a pardon. My leg must have been more resilient than I thought.

It's wonderful but baffling. I'll be more careful next time but there's perhaps another lesson: the plenitude of things and stuff hides more possibilities than we know--for good as well as woe. 

Provocateur

You asked yesterday evening as we, bathed in the mellow sunset light, stood around the grill with the sizzling pork chops: why should we care if the earth can't support all the people who do live and will come to live on it, so that, despite all we do, famine and mass death ensues? Since we're all doomed anyway, why not go all in for oneself?

Sometimes I think these kinds of incendiary questions are your (irritating) way of warming up our coming together, but really, there was warmth enough in the fact that you were here to have dinner with us on this golden evening.  We didn't have to put lighter fluid on the conversation as we had on the coals. 

Yet, you devil's advocate, the question has been seriously posed by some people, and will be again, so I should prepare my response.  After all, the 7 billion+ are an abstraction compared to the immediacy of this here with you now, smelling the meat and feeling more and more hungry: what principles make the fate of the multitude as a compelling as my short term prospects of tasty repast. 

One of the good reasons for having a robust life philosophy or framework of values is that it can provide cogent arguments for not doing what we'd rather, or doing what we'd rather not.  Thought-through and settled on before the test, principles help us broaden our perspective to consider, not just this moment but all we've learned and been persuaded of.  So I said, 'Because friendship, hospitality and exploration are primal values, rooted in  the from before-the-beginning passion of God-in-love for the Beloved (in whom we all participate), more fundamental even than our lives, even in those 'every-man-for-himself' scenarios moral theorists love to posit,' or something to that effect.

Brave talk, of course, and easy to make as we skewered the hot chops and put them on the plate for transfer to the table. 'This is something,' I said, 'that we're going to have to do less of, if we want to make sure everyone can be fed: eat meat.'

'How is that going to happen?' you asked, and the conversation shifted to what each of us had read recently about farming and farming policy and politics in general.  As the dinner progressed and the sun went down, you threw fewer bombs, but I thank you for that first which was so contrarian---it made me think, and commit myself to public speech (if only between you and me.)

How well I do at living my principles is what I'm tested on daily. Perhaps the first is hope that hope can be equitably shared among all mankind, and the second that sacrifice, if required, is worth it if  we encounter one another in the process.

When, in the gloaming, after blueberry pie and banana ice cream, I took you to the T, you remarked, 'You seemed less radical, more mellow this evening.' Maybe so, just so long as my convictions stay on call and able to balk or boot me when needed.

Discoverables

These streets, I've driven them before; these squares, I've visited: still, I was on the trail of something I hadn't noticed before and found what I hadn't expected.

The project I've taken up to extend the Emerald Necklace from Franklin Park sent me this afternoon to the back of a dollar store where I found an unadvertised metal bridge to Milton over a foaming weir in the Neponset River, downstream from its confluence with Mother Brook, the canal cut back in the 17th C from the Charles. 

On the other side, old burned out warehouses, huge abandoned circular tanks, concrete bunkers, a museum of dereliction, speaking to the former significance of the river and its power.  Every surface had been tagged by graffitti artists in bright shapes and colors. Cans of spray paint littered the ground. 

Later, I found myself going through an elaborate stone wall with triple lines of granite rock embedded in the concrete of its top. Between the wall and the river was a wide shelf whereon a bike path or greenway could be constructed. Now littered with old tires and TV sets, one day it could be where city people sit to watch the rippling flow of this under-appreciated river.

Why had I not known about any of this? Not known about the big rusted wheels and gears covered with weeds in the parking lot, not known about the new bike paths already operating and under construction downstream? 

Still what it gave me was a encounter with the plenitude which never fails to produce when I look through the opening, around the corner, on the other side of the whole in the fence. Are all places as littered with discoverables as those I visited today? Maybe this mix of abandoned industry and incipient recreation is peculiarly Boston. 

Indeed the big project itself, to give bikers in one day's pedalling the experience of rivers, ponds, hills, shore and city via trails, parkways and boulevards, is grand conglomerate of surprises and discoveries in this old, well-travelled place. 

Full spectrum

 The sound of evening insects, the crunch of gravel underfoot, the sound of shopping cart wheels over little bumps, the high pitches, the clarity of consonants, it's all yours again, and you're reveling in it, wife, to our mutual delight.

Tuesday, you noticed some difference as you were fitted with the hearing aids, but nothing spectacular. Wednesday, nothing seemed to work at all, the ear fittings nor the microphones themselves, and we, I confess it, railed against the professionals and the prices. Tonight, after learning how even just a little wax can occlude the sound, you're in heaven listening to the sounds of everything in all their crispness.

Your simile was apt: without the aids, it was like seeing with a few sections of bandwidth missing from the light spectrum, and almost all of the darker blues, an experience less striking, more muted and flat.

I've been having hearing problems this last week, so that my voice seems murky and muffled to me, my left ear seem numb. There's a kind of low-grade roar when there isn't any other sound. Here's hoping it's just wax. As it is, I can't hear my students quite as well as I used to, and I'm not sure whether I'm speaking too loudly or softly.

Still, I can hear and enjoy bird song, and the sounds of water in streams, music and 'normal' volume speech. I expect restoration of my normal acuity of a few weeks ago, but how good was that really? Who knows? We may be a pair, you and I.

Is it too late to dip into R. Murray Schafer's classic on the 'soundscape': 'The Tuning of The World' with its notation system for the analyzing and appreciating the different sounds we experience in our vicinity? He wrote: 'Noises are the sounds we have learned to ignore. Noise pollution today is being resisted by noise abatement. This is a negative approach. We must seek a way to make environmental acoustics a positive study program. What sounds do we want to preserve, encourage, multiply?'


What indeed? You said that these devices, one in each ear, restore a sense of immediacy, of things happening now, of a milieu of quickly passing occurrences, of the busy-ness of the world. Sure there are voices, mellifluous and expressive I don't want to lose, and music, of course, from symphonies to sonatas, but it's sense of life going on behind and beside me as well as in front that I would hate most to lose...

And your experience suggests that I won't have to, which is great good news, as is the restored capability to whisper to each other. 

Thought, plenitude and you

I began to feel myself caught up in thought when I posted What's With Thinking about a week ago. Written several years ago, but unearthed just recently, I has begun to challenge me.

All this last year I've been exploring the idea of the direct encounter with an Other or otherness as the unit of value in human life in the form of a 'diary' of reflected on encounters. But is that all? The Thinking essay made me think, as did my reading of Watson's The Modern Mind, as did the reluctance I began to feel in addressing myself to a You other than my readers. Like someone trying to find a comfortable position in an airplane seat, I've twisted, rearranged, stretched, tucked, until finally I've come up with the following that I think shows a way forward.

This has required going back to the framework and expanding it (while keeping the core premises intact.) It's been a thought project in its own right, what I would now call an 'invented encounter,' a form of making, a move of (more or less) mastery (in the art of thinking). It's been a awhile since I've lost myself in such a project and, oh, did it feel good. When thinking about thinking, I used to do this day after day, experiencing frustration, exertion and exhilaration regularly. That project ended (for then); I moved on to inventing the framework. That completed, testing began, and now is the time to evaluate the results.

Thinking is a kind of encounter, it seems to me, as is making generally. Octavia Butler's Blood Child, which I reread this morning. exemplifies the point. This science fiction tale was conceived and composed, as she wrote in her afterword, on three levels: a love story between two very different beings; then, a coming-of-age story, then 'my pregnant man story. I've always wanted to explore what it might be like for a man to be put into that most unlikely of all positions.'

I wonder if all making, by which I mean design and fabrication, of furniture and films and fabrics, anything, doesn't fall under this heading. The maker engages with the thought project from the 'germ or squirm' of an idea as if it were an other, sometimes cooperative, sometimes recalcitrant, right through to the presentable which represents something new in the plenitude of all things to be encountered by the maker at first but anybody after. A maker addresses the project and perhaps afterwards the presentable, and indirectly we address the maker through the presentable.

There's another thing, though. It came to me as a single word when I stood on the corner of the highway waiting to cross, two minutes from my home. Inform. I use this word to illustrate the stress shift that occurs in 'i' suffix words: in-form' vs in-form-a'-tion. But it's hung in my mind: in, as in inwardly; form, as in shape, construct, build. To inform is to tell someone something, to be informed is to be told something, and my mini-epiphany applied to my thinking up to and beyond the intersection in this way: if we want to learn something so that we remember and make us of it, we should teach it. This has always been my experience--and in this blog may still be. Preparing information in order to teach it requires me to give it a form, and it has to be my form, so that after the lesson is delivered, the form and its contents remain in me, alive and accessible.

As I've been reading Watson's book, reviewing names and stories and themes most of which I've been familiar with for years, I realize how much I want to tell someone both to in-form myself but also another, and the two dialectically related.

I spend a lot of time reading and watching and listening to not just news but information about science, history, economics, philosophy, and so on. And as I do I feel I am encountering what I've come to refer to as the plentitude, the wealth of stuff to be known (and beyond knowing.) The word 'universe' suggests, first of all, material things but plenitude presents us with abundance, superabundance, concrete and conceptual, depth and breadth, actuality and possibility, literal and implied, once and will be.

To learn about, say, the underfunded and under-supported Varian Fry and the many European arts, musicians and intellectuals he managed to help escape the Nazis is to be in-formed. Not just a new story, it's also provocative, in the sense of provoking thought about people and possibilities, in effect an indirect encounter with others and othernesses.

When I read (or watch or listen, etc.), part of the plenitude is formed in me. Keeping in-formed, I make new space in me for the plenitude, as the plenitude is where all things are. Shapes, edges, nodes, geometries and geographies of content are present in me, not rigid or static but flexible, dynamic, subject to discriminations and judgments redrawing lines and reordering statuses. This is not so much thinking as in the pursuit of thought projects as a free-flowing and incessant incorporation and adjustment to our circumstances, to the plenitude.

Making as invented encounter, in-forming as indirect encounter, and doing, or daring face to face 2nd person meeting, as direct encounter, what I've been writing about all this last year: these three more fully represent the challenge and opportunity offered us, the beloved Other, by God-in-love, G'luv; more fully describe the life of presence, adventure and (I believe) lastingness we can live; more fully completely liberate me to read and think, as well as meet. Teaching, in my experience, is the sweet spot where all these intersect most purely; but then, I'm a teacher; why wouldn't I feel this way?

You, spider, as I've been writing this standing up on my back porch, have been lolling in your hammock of silk strands strung between the corner of the house and the gutter downspout, your paired front legs extended to monitor the strands. Now you face this way, now reversed. Does time pass for you as it does for me writing this, grindingly slow or breakneck fast? The wind blows your web so you toss like a sailor. I know the feeling. Hang on.

Visioneer

'The problem,' you insisted, 'is perception, how people think. People see this area as a dumping ground, a no-man's land between jurisdictions and districts. Instead they need to see it as a corridor, a green passage between the end of the Emerald Necklace in Franklin Park and the Neponset River, completing the connection to the sea.'

You spoke passionately, Yorik, as always, as you lead us in the rain Sunday from place to place along what you call the American Legion Parkway Corridor (others call it 'highway') to look down at black, greasy, untended and overgrown Canterbury Brook doing its work of moving water toward Stony Brook, the Charles and the sea.

'Can you see a bike path here?' you asked of us. I tried to imagine away the tangle of trees and the steep muddy banks and see instead open paths, green slopes, people pedaling by, kids as well as adults, perhaps bikers coming all the way from the Common through the Fenway, along Muddy River, past Jamaica Pond and the Arboretum and Franklin Park, intending to circumnavigate the whole city.

'There are easements and restrictions but nobody has really watched out for this area because nobody has had a vision of what it could be. Instead, the various departments of the city want to use it as storage or staging areas,' you told us, pointing out different places on the maps you had copied for us.

We swung into the Audubon Wildlife Center for a look and took a loop through Mt Hope Cemetery but the big surprise was a series of rocky bluffs you'd discovered just beyond Stop and Shop overlooking Hyde Park Avenue (and owned by the city; you'd done the research.) 'Over there,' you said, pointing across at a wooded hill, 'is the Stony Brook Reservation. From there you can construct a path to Mother Brook and the Neponset and down to Boston Harbor. The necklace will get its clasp.'

You are not a big guy, nor a loud or fast talker, but you are insistent on the facts and the vision.  Your neatly trimmed white beard and white hair belie the passionate activist in you. These community projects sort of fall into your lap (kudos for getting the sidewalks cleared last winter) or rather, out of a mixture of interest, outrage and civic duty, you add this one more to the list of things you want to see done to make the neighborhood better.

This time you've caught my imagination. I can see it: a full city encirclement. I think of bike tours, races, Cirque du Boston, etc. You, as always, talk more about neighborhood parks, and more respect for the little pieces of green space scattered around.

Nobody but you (and, of course, your equally active wife) would have put all the pieces together as you have, would have seen in sluggish, malodorous sloughs and trash packed ravines the makings of a green corridor? Who else would have wandered up and found that outcrop with the great view west and south? Who else would start tours to let dullards like me know not just what is there, but what could be there?

This is what activist democracy is all about: citizens identifying what the common good needs and agitating for it. This is worlds away from just deploring the choices offered in our elections or complaining about the decisions made.

I don't know whom to talk to (though of course you have some suggestions) or how to proceed, but I'm going to invest in this project. You've inspired me. Can I ask anything more from a friend? 

What's with thinking?

Gkids, when I speak about thinking, this is what I mean:

What’s with thinking?

A lot of people are bad-mouthing thinking these days. They call it an obstacle to deeper consciousness, a trouble-maker, a doubt-generator, a logic-chopper, a brake on peak performance (over-thinking). They see it as worry or wondering, a waste of time or a cover for laziness, a distraction from simple seeing, an excuse for paralysis, indecision or delay. We are urged: don’t analyze, act. And driven every day by deadlines and demands on our minds, we cry, “Enough, no more. Give us rest from the work of thinking.”

At the same time, new technological devices and systems are tackling many cognitive tasks, producing results every more accurate, precise and rapid regarding matters ever more complex. “Anything else the human mind wants to outsource? Hey, what’s so good about thinking anyway?”

Yet everyone says that good thinking contributes to success in work and life. We hope that it (plus some good luck) will ensure our continued survival and progress. But if we don’t have good reasons to respect thinking (as we, homo sapiens sapiens, do it), how can we hope to encourage others to take it seriously, much less learn to do it better?

Below is presented a model of thinking that’s true to the mental activity as we actually engage in it, experience it, rely on and love it. This model can and should be used to improve our proficiency at thinking. Finally, it can be used to specify what is uniquely characteristic of human thinking and what the future of this activity might be.

A systematic analysis of thinking has to consider 1^st its work: various thought projects; 2^nd its workspace, the conceptual elbow room available for thought projects to be worked on; and 3^rd its workers, we, each one thinking, who launch projects and see them through to completion. A useful analogy may be the garage workshop of a hobbyist, equipped with benches, tools, and projects in progress.

“Thinking: the kind of work you can put your mind to”

Thinking, as I use the term, is engagement in thought projects, that is, serious and determined efforts towards bringing particular sequences of linked perceptions and conceptions to their concrete and satisfying fulfillment by means of intuition, observation and inference.

Thinking is not, by this definition, the same as obsessive thought that is never satisfied, nor is it daydreaming that is not moving ‘toward’ anything. The thinking person always has on-going projects, even if, at any particular moment, work on them is not going on. Thinking is real work that produces something, a thought, something tangible, measurable, verifiable in the sense that it can be spoken, shown or bring something to pass. For example, thinking may produce an explanation, a book review, a design, a plan to avoid traffic, an articulate insight, a set of instructions, a word of advice, a solution to a problem, an alternative, a plan of action. A sentence is a complete thought; a paragraph is a unit of thinking, that is, generating, developing and framing thoughts. (Think of reading as shadowing the thoughts of an author.)

When we reflect on the sensations of thinking, we struck by its virtual physicality. It’s as if thinking takes place in a mental world modeled on a physical one. When we’re thinking, we feel we’re in the midst of a space with places to go and room for things to be, and in the presence of objects what we can handle almost as if they were palpable, hefting them, carrying them, pressing them together or keeping them apart, all the while going or flowing ‘forward.’ This thinking space seems to have terrain to be traversed, uphill, downhill, on and on. Sometimes we bump against walls and barriers and have to go around, under or over, or we backtrack, or stall.

There’s thinking weather--fog, bleak overcast, or bright, breezy shadow-casting sunlight--to be endured or enjoyed. Thinking objects are sometimes inert, stable and dependable, and at other times, active, mutable, unbiddable. We, the ones thinking, find ourselves sometimes exhilarated, sometimes exhausted, now unable to restrain ourselves from racing ahead, now barely able to muster the will to keep slogging. At time we’re lost, weary and frustrated; at other times, sure, strong and masterful. Thinking feels like the flow of our physical and public existence: challenging, busy, surprising, very alive.

Thought projects

The number and variety of possible thought projects themes is boundless, each project of a scope and nature chosen by the one thinking. Projects follow on projects, inspiring and facilitating each other. Major projects--system designs, for instance--may be broken into sub-projects which may be reassembled to fulfill the original purpose or used as building blocks for different goals. Some projects are begun, languish, and suddenly come alive to finish in a grand flourish; others advance steadily without drama. Some consist of a preconceived sequence of small thought steps; others consist of a series of mini-projects responding adaptively to local or changing circumstances. Often we toggle between any of several active-status projects open in our minds at any moment. The progress of thought projects can often be tracked in the form of scribbled notes, sketches, discursive conversations, prototypes and models. These overt expressions serve as landmarks, as travel diaries, as drafts, and as traction surfaces for further progress.

We can consider the ends of projects in terms of a hierarchy of striving: for instance, life-long mental health may be a vision, cognitive fitness may be a goal, regular practice with puzzles my be an objects and completion of today’s newspaper sudoku ma be a presentable project outcome.

Determining or defining the specifications of any of these kinds of ends may represent the fulfillment of any thought project. We may have an end in mind for a project and only have to find a way to realize it; or we may have a promising way of going forward toward some yet-to-be-discovered end, the actual lineaments of which can only be drawn upon encounter; or most likely, we have a general sense of both possibly profitable means, and possibly attractive ends, and a readiness to work the one against the other. So, a certain objective with a detailed description of required criteria--specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bounded, perhaps a solution needed for a specific problem--may find itself satisfied by what is produced and offered as a solution. Vice-versa, what is discovered may be just the thing to represent a previously unspecified solution to a previously unrecognized problem.

Thinking Questions

Thought projects tackle three kinds of questions: ‘what next?’ ‘what else?’ and ‘what exactly?’, each of which represents one of the three modes of thinking: creative, conjectural and critical.

Creative thinking responds to ‘what next?’ by taking the initiative and launching new ventures that being into being what doesn’t yet exist. Conjectural thinking responds to ‘what else?’ by going in search of the unsuspected and discovering the not-yet-known. Critical thinking responds to ‘what exactly?’ by drawing distinctions that clarify and confirm what is not yet suitable, right or appropriate. Every thought project engages all three modes, all of which are directed toward a single product satisfying the requirements of each. Indeed, any project, as a project, involves initiatives, scoutings and judgments, and requires creative, conjectural and critical thinking.

Each of the three modes has its own ‘compass’ that orients it toward the pole of its fulfillment:-

--The pole of selfness or wholeness: creative thinking is directed to the making of products that do for themselves, to themselves, with, toward and of themselves, having an intrinsic-ness and wholeness which is independent of the creator.

--The pole of thereness: conjectural thinking is directed toward the revelation of and engagement with previously un-encountered or unrecognized presences, actual apart from the belief or opinion of the discover.

--The pole of rightness: critical thinking is directed toward the reaching of conclusions about what is good, true or sufficient, which determinations are cogent and convincing, independent of the arguer.

These orientation principles, along with sightings, clues, results of tests, measurements of rates of change and other observations provide dead-reckoning ways of tracking progress of sequences of thoughts toward the achievement of concrete fulfillments characterized by wholeness, rightness and thereness. Of course, not all projects are assured success; we may fail to solve the sudoku.

Thinking Spaces

Each project defines the scale and scope of its own thinking space. This is the room for working, made available by the holding of certain sets of presumptions and permissions, by which, in turn, are made available by certain groups and classes of perceptions and conceptions. To be useful, workspaces generally must be a. Bigger than the work  b. With room enough for tools, supplies, etc.; c. Reconfigurable as projects evolve; d. Designable; e. Able to sustain morale; f. Unsupervised, free from snooping; g. With places for works-in-progress and works-in-pause, staging areas; h. With still empty spaces set aside; i. Semi-permanent, able to be reconstructed; j. Including odd or surprising or not obviously relevant items; k. Able to inspire.

As a project develops and discovers itself, its workspace may expand, contract or change shape. Since projects come to fulfillment in single completion points, an analogy may be a coordinate system of latitude, longitude and elevation lines which might start, say, at the south pole, expand to the equator and contract toward the north pole. Likewise the dimensions of real possibility, of freedom and openness in which the project is pursued first expand then contract to the specificity of the presentable project. The evolving shape of the project over time can be mapped according to three coordinates.

The three coordinates of the thinking workspace are configured and behave differently according to the modes of thinking which they serve: creative thinking goes forward with respect the Opportunity (‘fill me’) coordinate; conjectural thinking, the Otherness (‘find me’) coordinate; and critical thinking, the Orientation (‘fit me’) coordinate.

The Opportunity coordinate consists of strings of points which can each balloon into empty (or vacatable) spaces available to be occupied by whatever new thing the thinker decides to originate there. The possibilities of size and shape of each of these opportunity spaces is bounded by particular combinations of resources or liberties internally or externally available. The contents of these spaces are undetermined until the thinking begins to make something in it; they become fully determined when these creations achieve full self-ness. The coming into being of new entities modifies the coordinate as a whole, changing existing opportunity spaces and even making new ones possible.

The Otherness coordinate consists of strings of references to what we know, things and arrangements, but like the number line, with potential places--between and within each reference and beyond all references--for everything we don’t know or even suspect, that is, the fullness of everything else in the world and in the future. The spaces of potential things we are ignorant of are penetrated, explored, and mapped by the ones thinking, discoveries becoming new knowledge references on the coordinate, often changing the arrangements and confirmations status of prior references.

The Orientation coordinate consists of strings of criteria, as individual axes or multi-axis bundles, related to different principles, rules or specifications that represent the standards against which at any point--the product in conception, in production or on presentation--can be tested. Individual criterion axes may be as broad as rights-of-way or narrow as tightropes but for the project to be within its boundaries is an ‘okay’ and a ‘go-ahead’ and to be at the core of any criterion, if any is defined, is concrete and satisfying fulfillment.

Criteria may be a-priori and appropriate to the fundamental principles of the thought project or the one thinking. Criteria may also be designed, decreed, revised or discovered in the course of the project. Determining what relevant criteria exist, how accurate or precise they are, whether the project at any point is within their boundaries and how close to the core is the function of arguments--abductive, inductive, deductive. Special sets of axes are used for testing the principles and methods by which rightness is determined, as much as for determining wholeness or thereness.

A thought project at any particular moment, that is, when a certain thought  under consideration is linked to others prior, proximal and distal by implication or inference may suggest an opportunity for something new to be created; may indicate the presence of an other to be encountered; may confirm that the project is on the right track or clarify where it needs to go. With regard to the overarching criteria of wholeness, rightness, thereness, we may ask, what does the thought indicate in terms of project progress?

Expansion of the workspace in terms of creative thinking is the readiness to realize real creative possibilities (inventions); in terms of conjectural thinking, the readiness to encounter unsuspected possible existents (discoveries); in terms of critical thinking, the readiness to learn about possibly relevant criteria (discriminations). This is space open-ended in terms of what can be found, what can be made, what can be determined: space to be filled, space in which things are to be encountered, space tied together. In terms of the three coordinates, movement is toward wholeness, thereness, rightness. Thinking is an activity of local and global divergences and convergences, inflations and deflations.

The whole workspace is the whole mind, home to many projects-in-progress. In our daily life, the workspace, its windows open to take in experiences, goes walking in the world.  On the way, through its presence in and interaction with what it meets there, it finds and gets information useful to existing projects and ideas and incentives for new ones.

These three coordinates describe the workshop at any particular time (however instantaneous or inclusive.) The time component is the life-clock of the one thinking. Successive thoughts and their workspaces may leave records in the form of notes, diagrams, speech or, more subtle but no less real, permanent reconfiguration of the architecture of the mind. The trajectory of a project can be tracked back through successions of different size and configurations of the workspace. Likewise, workspace changes are strung together by the links between successive thoughts.

One, Thinking

The one thinking is not just a channeler of thoughts but the thinker of them. More than that, the one thinking is the one who initiates projects and articulates the product. The one thinking is the one inventing the new, the one engaged with others and otherness, the one living (and dying) according to its determinations of the good, true or sufficient. The livingness of the one thinking is more fundamental then just mental activity, its resources more profound, its challenges more dynamic and dangerous. Yet thinking applies itself to all these matters out of prudence and joy in order to improve its chances in and enhance its appreciation of life and the world. Only human thinking can perform three key tasks for survival and prevalence: question premises, recognize otherness and create new genres or forms.

Specific, possible project to the one thinking in several ways. Attractor-driven projects take the form of quests, haloed by the kind of glamour, often related to personal preferences, triggered by evocative calls, or suggestive glimpses of intriguing ways to feel. Impellor-driven projects take the form of problems, highlighted by urgency, often related to local circumstances and exigencies, triggered by the inadequacy of existing solution, irritating skewedness, imbalance or lack of fit, or the frustration of pieces missing. Part of the training of one, thinking, is enhancement of the sensitivity to the latent factors which move us to conceive of quests and questions.

The analogy of the craftsperson suggests the virtues and disciplines of those who are regularly thinking well. Perhaps the premier virtue is the readiness to leave solid earth behind and step forward into the river of a new thought project. The one thinking foregoes stability, clarity and security when beginning a new project. There’s usually a risk in thinking and always some discomfort. Thinking is messy before it’s neat; open and exposed before it’s snug and tight.

Good thinking also requires diligence in keeping projects moving forward, technical proficiency in, for instance, fabrication, research, and argument, as well as project management, resourcefulness and scrupulousness with regard to quality. A most inspiring example of this, for me, was the willingness of Johannes Kepler to reject his initial plausible results concerning the orbit of Mars, results which were the product of so much hard calculation, just because they were not consistent with the data of Tycho Brahe. Thinking is exertion, so fitness is important.

One who is thinking must assent on some level to any undertaken thought project. If not the activity becomes a mechanization and estrangement of the mind, since we recognize ourselves by our thinking. Teams working on projects share targets and work in common workspaces and may have characteristic styles but the basic and irreplaceable unit agent of thinking is the individual one thinking.

The quality of thoughts and thinking

There are five criteria we can use to tell is thoughts are of poor quality: 1^st they are derivative, dependent, with little intrinsic weight, lacking wholeness; 2^nd they are trite, no unexpectedness, lacking originality; 3^rd they are fuzzy, indistinct, vague, lacking respect for details; 4^th they don’t seem to have been produced or appropriated through hard work and hard choices, lacking history; 5^th they are ungrounded in real-world observations or unlinked to generally accepted authority or technique, lacking effectiveness.

Thinking as an activity can be held to four standards: 1^st faux vs real thinking--no work, no mental sweat; 2^nd unsuccessful vs successful thinking--no fulfillment after much effort; 3^rd bad vs good thinking--poor technique, including project management itself; and 4^th unhealthy vs healthy thinking--not self-renewing, self-sustaining. Healthy thinking protects itself, improves and invests in itself, sees opportunities in itself, depends on and trusts itself, is sometimes surprised by itself, appreciates itself. This is the adaptive behavior of a capability that enhances our adaptability.

Conversation of exploration

At the heart of any thought project is query, the interrogative spirit methodically applied (after Justus Buchler). The thought project workspace can be considered a query space, even a locus for many dynamic query spaces coming into and going out of existence.

Likewise, conversation of exploration (convex) cultivates query space as the key to what distinguishes it from other kinds of conversation, both those of quid pro quo exchange, those impatient to arrive at lock-down judgments or those that wander dreamily (more akin to contemplation, a different mental activity). Convex deliberately extends the time between provocative encounter and practical judgment in order to freely pursue ‘what else?’, ‘what next?, ‘what exactly?’

As it does so, convex fairly foams with query spaces and may not necessarily end with a ‘that’s that’ conclusion but with a mix of new findings, new inventions, new distinctions and yet-to-be resolved new questions.

Thought projects and convex both operate in query space, one reflexive, focusing more on product: the presentable; the other more social, focusing more on process: the query experience itself. The two overlap, intertwine and support each other.

Since convex an be a gateway to engagement in thought projects, it should be defined more carefully. A conversation of exploration is an active session of some number of people engaged in looking and thinking out loud regarding a particular object, occurrence, process or place they’ve chosen to put themselves in the presence of. There are three guidelines for successful convex: 1^st they generate query space; 2^nd they stay linked to the presence; 3^rd they produce some take-away.