Occupy Your Mind

"All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears." - Susan Sontag*

"Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterlize you." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

photo by Tiffa Day, CC BY-NC 2.0

"Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency...

Truth is sought for its own sake... Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough. For the truths are plunged in obscurity."

- Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham), Aporias against Ptolemy

Then, to wonder: What defines truth? The truth to whose opinion? Where do our opinions come from? We assume they are always of our own creation. Do we question our opinions? They are, after all, ours—our judgments, our beliefs, our thoughts.

"The sound shivers through the walls, through the table, through the window frame, and into my finger.

These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics. Old George Orwell got it backward.

Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's holding your attention every moment you're awake.

He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed.

He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled.

And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world."

- Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

image by katmary, CC BY-NC 2.0

"Alienation begins when culture divides me against myself, puts a mask on me, gives me a role I may or may not want to play. Alienation is complete when I become completely identified with my mask, totally satisfied with my role, and convince myself that any other identity or role is inconceivable...

The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free."

- Thomas Merton, The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton

Can we change our awareness, what we think, how we think? What is really influencing our thoughts?

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves" - Buddha



* This quote has been attributed to both Alan C. Kay and Susan Sontag. Since it was noted (Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture, C. A. Bowers) that Kay had quoted Sontag in his 1991 article for Scientific American Magazine, I have chosen to attribute the quote to Sontag, as well. Further elucidation on the source would be greatly appreciated.