Constructed Thoughts

I was given a question: “Why does our contemporary culture place such little value on thought?” First of all, this question is a question that could only be asked by someone who believes most people in our culture do not think as much as they should. I believe our culture today places just as much emphasis on thought as any other large culture ever has. We have even more things to think about today. It is the information age after all. The problem lies in the fact that we are thinking the wrong thoughts. I would like to rephrase this question as, “Why does contemporary culture put so little emphasis on the value of thoughts we think?”

Our culture puts a lot of thought into what people should be thinking. It tells us what to think about all the time. One can assume that the average middle class person’s day consists of either listening to the radio, or watching TV. Commercials consist of a good 25% of what we see and hear all day. This makes us think a lot. It makes us think of what to buy, when to buy it, and which insurance quote is the lowest. It makes us think of the best way to lose weight, and how bad cigarettes are. It makes us question what we look like and who we are, and we don’t even have to come up with the answer to our questions! Instead it hands the answers to us on a silver platter. It makes us insecure when we aren’t in style, and secure when we are. We have to think a lot to stay on top in today’s world. We have to think a lot about what’s hip and what’s not.

As of now, it may sound like our culture places a lot of value on what thoughts we think. This is not quite correct. It is true that our culture makes us think a lot. It might be argued that it is telling us what to think, but in the end, only we can tell us what to think. Even if you make the argument, “You just said the answers are given to us in the last paragraph! You don’t think about a problem when you’re given the answer!”. Remember I said it came on a silver platter? Well I didn’t tell you there was a pile of beef jerky on the plate. We end up chewing on what is given to us, even if we didn’t think of it ourselves. When someone goes out and buys a fashionable pair of sunglasses, they don’t think about why they are buying them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about them constantly. Everyone they pass, they will be hoping their new glasses get noticed. They might even spend the entire night researching what color is most fashionable with their new sunglasses. This takes a lot of thought! We just might not care what we are thinking, because we cannot easily be convinced if it is right or wrong.

As an example, and this is a true story. I went to college with a girl who had a brand new iPhone. I asked her if she knew where it was made, and how it is disposed of when it is thrown out. Arguably two of the most important questions one can ask about a product. Naturally like most consumers, she had no idea. She only cared that she had it. I then asked her why she had to have the internet on the phone when she was on a computer 8 hours a day. She said because when she is in the car it is helpful, and she went on to tell me so much information about what the phone can do that I could barely follow along. I asked her how many times she used all of the features that she just told me about, and naturally she acted like a monkey and howled at me saying something like, “Why are you ruining my day?”

I simply said back, “At least I do it with purpose.”

What I am getting at in this example is that people might be thinking more than they every have. They just aren’t asking themselves why they think about what they do. Another simpler example, would be a mathematician who can do extremely complicated physics calculations, but never had a girlfriend in his life. Or a famous pop star that lives a life of such extreme excess and seclusion from everyday life, that she forgets what ‘everyday life’ is, which changes her perception of the everyday person to one of an ant.

It is extremely hard to get people to question themselves. Almost everyone questions every last person they can think of before questioning themselves. If you ever wore sandals to the beach for a day or two and you and your friends were sitting down at the end of the day and someone said, “Who’s feet stink?” I guarantee noone would look at their feet first. Though if it was dog poo on our shoe, we might look at our own feet. Why? Because it wasn’t our fault. It was the dog’s.

The vast majority of people on this planet don’t enjoy questioning themselves, because they know deep down inside they could be wrong. It gets harder and harder to question yourself because of the build up over time of things you had no idea you were doing, that you knew were wrong but never admitted to.

It would be best to sum up what has been said in an example you can visualize:

Imagine the ‘self’ as a marble. Imagine information the self comes across as rubber bands. When we are informed of something via TV, a friend, or even our own thought, we place a rubber band on the marble. When we question an idea, we stretch a rubber band that has been already placed on the marble, and compare it to a band that might be more elastic and more ‘correct’, and than replace the one that was on the marble with the more suitable band. This is how we are able to change ourselves for the better, and for the worse.

The problem with today’s information age is that there are hundreds of rubber bands being thrown at us every minute of every day, many of which are not exactly the most elastic and helpful bands. People are such large rubber band balls by now that most of them don’t know how to take them off anymore because they’ve gotten so tight. If they ever wanted to make a fundamental change in their life, they would have to go to one of the source rubber bands. Which by now is underneath a ton of other rubber bands. So why bother? Just keep adding more. One day you won’t be able to fit anymore and you will stop adding them all together. You won’t have to, or be able to… think again!

So I ask of you. Please. Use only the rubber bands that are really important, and always be ready to replace them with better ones. They do get old and worn eventually. As does all knowledge. Being able to replace them is the only way to grow yourself throughout your entire life. Marbles are much more beautiful than an ugly rubber band ball. If you have to… just start with a couple on the outside. Your plasma screen and your iPhone perhaps? Maybe replace them with a tree and a sunset? Just a thought…

Adam Gazdalski is an Artist, Writer and Graphic Designer located in Pennsylvania. He can be contacted here.