{"id":324,"date":"2021-07-20T12:24:03","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T12:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.narrativeinfrastructure.org\/blog\/?p=324"},"modified":"2024-11-11T08:53:08","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T08:53:08","slug":"when-is-thinking-ever-useful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.narrativeinfrastructure.org\/blog\/when-is-thinking-ever-useful\/","title":{"rendered":"WHEN IS THINKING EVER USEFUL?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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IS THINKING ACTION?<\/h1>\n
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He stood there.<\/h6>\n
In the middle of a riot, with tensions high and water-cannons on stand-by, he just stood there.<\/h6>\n
He was not trying to stop a line of tanks.<\/h6>\n
He was not impeding the British cavalry.<\/h6>\n
He stood there\u2014in public\u2014<\/h6>\n

and thought.<\/h4>\n

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\"Erdem<\/p>\n

In 2013, there was a dramatic uprising in Turkey initially inspired by the desire to preserve a public park. Erdem G\u00fcnd\u00fcnz, an artist, was struck by the portrait of the political idealist of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal (Atat\u00fcrk). There, in the contested space, he stood and thought for eight hours.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Life of the Mind<\/h4>\n

This is a modern example of what is described in the “Life of the Mind” (Arendt, 1978) as one of the few moments when thinking had a direct political expression.<\/p>\n

Normally, thinking is a withdraw from the apparent world to develop fictional worlds. It is an act of storytelling, of developing “what if?” scenarios.<\/p>\n

Thinking is not, in fact, a fact<\/em>-oriented process.<\/strong> Science and cognition is fact-oriented, and seeks to turn the cogs to make the machine of science extrude a new answer that was better than previous answers.<\/p>\n

Thinking is not r<\/strong>easonable.<\/strong> There is nothing that needs to lead to thinking, it is not in order of any process, there is no reason to think. When I want to make bread I do not think about it: the reason I add the starter to the pre-mixed dry ingredients is that is the correct order. Thinking about this order would only distract me from the order that has reasons. Thinking withdraws me into my fabricated mental world, and disassociates me from my senses–the sensible world where cooks do their best work.<\/span><\/p>\n

(caveat: there are moments when both cooks and scientists engage in thinking to create something wholly novel and delicious, but it is not the core of the cookbook or method.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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