Trivial pursuit and human extinction

I was awakened last night by a loud knocking on my door. Fortunately the knocking was not reality but was a dream.

When I “heard” the knocking I sat upright in bed with my heart racing and immediately tried to determine if what I had heard was the real world rather than a dream. I assume such things happen to everyone; such things have happened to me before.

I was unable to go back to sleep. Instead my mind led me into contemplations that have resulted in my preparing this posting thus ending my attempt on going back to sleep.

I am retired and have been using my free time for the last several years studying the human condition. I have been trying to comprehend why humans do the absurd things we do and if there is some way to change the direction our civilization is heading. As part of this effort I have been engaged in several of these Internet discussion forums writing my thoughts about our human propensity to self-destruct.

Circumstances this summer have led me into becoming a bricklayer for the first time in my life. I needed to build a small brick wall in my front yard and I have been engrossed in this project for many weeks.

When I look back on my bricklaying efforts I recognize that I have tranquilized myself with trivia. For many weeks I have narrowed the focus of my intellectual interests to the follies of amateur bricklaying. The loud knocking was my unconscious awakening me from my holiday of trivia. My mind was willing to focus upon the trivia just as before it was focused on the important. But a sense of guilt drives my intellectual activity back to more important matters.

Have you experienced the difficulty sometimes of separating dream from reality?

Do you think that such things as hearing a loud knocking is our unconscious sending us a message?

The mind is selective. To have your mind constantly filled with 'important' things such as thinking about the human condition is all well and good but you've got to eat and find shelter in order to feed your mind. Similarly you've (probably) got to build that wall so your mind will focus on that until the task is done. Once the task is complete your mind will 'allow' you to focus on other things. Maybe...

sniffy


Sniffy

I think that the mind is constantly at work. I have often discovered that solutions to my problems will just pop up in my mind. If we do not give our mind something important to worry over the mind will worry over whatever trivia that comes to mind. That is why I think it is so important to always have some bit of important thoughts that are focused on important matters otherwise we are just wasting our mental abilities.

What's 'trivial' about building things?
What's 'important' about mental meandering?

Muse upon this awhile and get back to us.

I think that the mind is constantly at work. I have often discovered that solutions to my problems will just pop up in my mind. If we do not give our mind something important to worry over the mind will worry over whatever trivia that comes to mind.

And this has never happened when you've been thinking and doing "trivial things"?
How sad, it does for me.

What's 'trivial' about building things?
What's 'important' about mental meandering?

Muse upon this awhile and get back to us.



What is important is relative to one's priorities. I think that if we humans continue on the present path our species will not last another two hundred years. I consider it to be my responsibility to ride through the land shouting that there is much danger ahead and that everyone should get an intellectual life so that together we might yet prevent the reality that we are heading into.

And this has never happened when you've been thinking and doing "trivial things"?
How sad, it does for me.

The answers come at any time. However, if I am not feeding my mind with new ideas to contemplate then the mind will focus its energy on the mundane that I do feed it. I think that it is important to continually have some degree of sophisticated intellectual stimulation to challenge the mind.

...I consider it to be my responsibility to ride through the land shouting that there is much danger ahead and that everyone should get an intellectual life so that together we might yet prevent the reality that we are heading into.
You would, unfortunately, be wasting significant amounts of time. Intellectuals often make the mistake of assuming that anyone is capable of thought. Most have never exercised the capability, nor have the ability to, any more than humans have a use for an appendix anymore.

There is merit in bricklaying, and there is merit in thought.
A solution to this would seem to be thought while laying bricks - but one does so only at a detriment in the quality of both.

Outback

Negativity and defeatism are not conducive to the salvation of the species. I do not expect everyone to follow but if 2 in a thousand will get an intellectual life we might save the planet earth.

I consider it to be my responsibility to ride through the land shouting that there is much danger ahead and that everyone should get an intellectual life so that together we might yet prevent the reality that we are heading into.
And when everyone has an intellectual life what will they do for a living?
Who will build the houses etc?
What "reality"?

The answers come at any time. However, if I am not feeding my mind with new ideas to contemplate then the mind will focus its energy on the mundane that I do feed it. I think that it is important to continually have some degree of sophisticated intellectual stimulation to challenge the mind.
So you're unaware that the human mind needs some free-wheel time (and the answers come when NOT concentrating)?

Outback
I do not expect everyone to follow but if 2 in a thousand will get an intellectual life we might save the planet earth.
And if they don't we still might.

Have you experienced the difficulty sometimes of separating dream from reality?

Not at present.


Do you think that such things as hearing a loud knocking is our unconscious sending us a message?

Its a hypnopompic hallucination.

everyone should get an intellectual life so that together we might yet prevent the reality that we are heading into.

What reality are we heading into and how exactly would leading an intellectual life prevent this future fraught with danger?

Its a hypnopompic hallucination.

Hypnopompic! That is one kick-ass word.

gurglin..


I would point to the wars of the twentieth century, the development of our destructive technologies, and to our cavalier attitude toward the earth as strong indications that we have a propensity for self-destruction.

gurglin..
I would point to the wars of the twentieth century, the development of our destructive technologies, and to our cavalier attitude toward the earth as strong indications that we have a propensity for self-destruction.

If that's your evidence then our "propensity" took a long time to manifest itself.

What is important is relative to one's priorities. I think that if we humans continue on the present path our species will not last another two hundred years. I consider it to be my responsibility to ride through the land shouting that there is much danger ahead and that everyone should get an intellectual life so that together we might yet prevent the reality that we are heading into.

But then everyone out there must in one way or other lay bricks: be practical that, is, interact with the physical world. Your 'listeners' will all be doing this. If you cannot blend you ideas with the practical and concrete (no puns in intended) aspects of their lives or think somehow that they are wasting time while they are laying bricks you will not reach then. I think, as someone else above has hinted at, you a making a false dichotemy. And being rather linear. Who knows how learning that very concrete task, which was relatively new for you, will aid you in the other task that you assume is more important. But even this is to place all the value in the 'intellectual' task.

Body and mind should not be seen as split. That's my unasked for moral of the day.