How to Tell if You’re Actually Thinking
Written by Cameron McAllister
Let’s venture a modest definition of thought. Though this is an immensely rich topic, one basic way to define it would be to say that thought is mental labor directed toward a specific end. Consider some of these practical examples. You’re planning a meal for a large family gathering, taking into account the schedule, number of people, space, and dietary restrictions. This is a clear and practical example of thought in action. Putting together a savings plan to buy a new car is another example. We could also point to the kind of problem solving we often encounter in our day-to-day lives. You discover a leak in your dishwasher and set out to determine whether it’s something that requires a quick fix, a YouTube tutorial, or an actual plumber. In all of these instances, mental labor is directed toward a specific end. It has what Dallas Willard calls VIM: vision, intention, means.
Naturally, we tend to associate thought with traditionally intellectual pursuits. In this case, we can think of the mental effort expended in solving a mathematical equation, performing a test in a laboratory, or writing a scholarly monograph. Once again, all of these projects require vision, intention, and means.
Labor is a telling word in our definition. Ours is an age of ease and convenience. We’ve got “life hacks” for every conceivable pursuit and we’ve got the ability to customize our many consumer preferences. Consequently, we tend to outsource a good deal of our mental labor. Ideally, the ability to offload some of these basic tasks frees up mental space for other intellectual labors. I remain conflicted about Google Maps even as I benefit from the service. Would it do me a world of good to consult an actual map to reach a destination? Absolutely. Has a certain region of my brain atrophied? Very likely. Is the problem just that we’re becoming lazier in the thinking department? Are we now all too willing to simply outsource our thinking to the experts?
It’s a tempting prognosis and we hear it all the time. But I don’t think laziness is the main culprit behind the current decline in the quality of thought. I also don’t buy the idiocracy-style arguments that define our moment as one of intellectual devolvement. For all its folly, human nature is relatively stable. We can soar to great intellectual heights and we can sink to new lows in virtually any decade.
What we do seem to be unwilling to do these days, however, is slow down. Serious thought involves not only mental labor, but time for reflection. In our age of constant hype and overstimulation, it takes effort to break away from the constant barrage of temptations vying for our attention. It also takes discipline to withhold an opinion if we don’t yet know what we think. In some cases—more than we’d like to admit—we simply have nothing meaningful to say on a given topic and we need to make our peace with that. The alternative is to add yet more noise pollution with our uninformed“take.” Thought may well require extended silence—something that would constitute a nice change of pace for our frantic cultural moment.
Marketers have long understood St. Augustine’s dictum that we are defined by what we love. Since they can’t inspire genuine love through ads, however, they opt for lust. Obviously, this statement isn’t limited to marketers. For everyone creating “content”—the catchall term for whatever clogs up our feeds these days—the key is to seduce. Consequently, most of us navigate a gallery of seduction on our phones throughout the day. For many, it’s one of the first things to enter their field of vision.
How do you tell if you’re actually thinking? Consider how long it took you to reach your conclusion. Did you slow down enough for a coherent mental event to transpire?