Irony: Thinking Insessantly About Whether I Think Too Much
K asked me recently in a comment whether I sometimes wonder if I think to much.
Short Answer: Yep.
Long Answer:
And then, because of the inherent irony in asking the question, really--should I just answer off the cuff, like in a rorschach test, or should I think about my answer? Another possible irony: The answers to this question (to me) are so intricate and lengthy that even writing an answer to it is going to take some time.
Whenever I have something I want to think about that is sort of a huge subject, I try to find a 'hook' into it. A way of beginning to think about it. There are even so many hooks regarding this that it's hard to begin. I think, though, given my recent state(s) of mind and my interest in friendship and love at the moment, that my hook will be this:
You're not the first one to ask, k. ;)
That is to say, here is a general pattern that I sometimes see with friends and lovers who tend to not stay friends and lovers (or even acquaintences who go through the process relatively quickly):
1. Meet Jeff.
2. Find yourself intrigued by some of the conceptual connections he makes, the way he tries to consciously live his life, and the interesting conversations you can have with him.
3. Spend a period of time being interested in him for these reasons.
4. (Optional--mostly optioned by ex-lovers) Slowly start to realize that you think that he's full of shit.
5. Start to become annoyed by the fact that all that stuff you liked about him, it just keeps going, without much of a break.
6. Find yourself wanting him to shut up, turn all that stuff off for just a little while, for Christ's sake.
7. Recognize that he rarely does shut up/stop that stuff, and that you can't take it any longer.
8. Ask him "do you ever think you think too much?"
9. Burn that bridge.
10. Tell him (implicitly or explicitly, depending on how close you were) you still want to be friends 'someday', but that you need a break from him.
11. Burn that bridge and don't look back.
Some of the steps get mixed around, and some of my friends (and at least one lover) didn't go through all of the stages (erm, otherwise I wouldn't have any friends, right? I mean, I'm close to that, but not quite there), but I've had it happen enough times that when somebody asks me this question, I have to make a concerted effort to not get defensive.
On the other hand, if it's been asked of me that many times, seems to me that it's probably a perfectly appropriate question. Recently (months ago) there was some mutual attraction between me and a new-ish friend of mine. We hung out a few times, and there was definitely some chemistry and we had some great conversations. At one point I brought up something she had said, and was somewhat critical of it--to me, I was critical in the sense that I wondered if she knew/thought that what she had said was sort of cruel and, well, shallow in the way that I thought it might have been. Her initial response to me: "Don't drag me into your navel-gazing bullshit." A few days later, she apologized, told me that I had (unknowingly) pushed a button of hers, and that she didn't really think of me that way.
But here's the thing: I recognize that it's irritating, that it may sometimes be self-serving, that obsessing about concepts can even be harmful--and even mean, really. I recognize that it sometimes is navel-gazing, in the negative sense of the term. I try to not obsess. I try to not ask questions that really are a way of thrusting my opinion on the world. I try to read people's reactions to my questions such that I don't keep pressing when they are tired of the tack I'm taking. But I am not always successful in these attempts, so I do get people saying things like this to me:
"Just have a beer, Jeff, and shutup."
"What is this, a fucking therapy session?"
"You're just a difficult person to be friends with."
And I don't think that these questions and comments are completely inappropriate. Something I like in some of my friends is that they'll help break me out of little recursive fits of thinking I get into. On the other hand, there are only a handful of people who will/want to go the distance with me conceptually, and, as it turns out, these are pretty much my closest friends (this isn't true to a person, but it's generally true). In fact, some of my favorite people (my favorite prof from SFSU and Lex come to mind) have more intellectual stamina for conceptual analysis than I have, so I can understand that different people have different amounts of interest/patience in doing lots of conceptual analysis, because sometimes I get tired of it, too.
That all said, I think the implication that people sometimes make (not necessarily K, by the way) when they ask this is that thinking is mutually exclusive from doing. That there is a clear line between 'thinking about life' and 'living life'. I understand the impetus for this implication. Clearly there are times when it would be better for me to just have a beer, or have a good cry; times when it's good for me to just shut up. There are even times when I wish the little conceptual-analysis voices in my head would go bowling or something and give me some peace. At the same time, I think it's important to acknowledge that thinking is a kind of doing. And I don't just mean that in a surface-y definitional sense. I also mean it in this sense: Thinking about things almost always affects how one does things. This is one of the main reasons for doing some thinking...it may seem like navel-gazing for me to ask myself questions constantly, but if the answers make a difference in my life, then I think it's worth doing.
Another aspect of the whole thinking-as-doing-something thing is that I just enjoy thinking about stuff, by myself or with others. Not all the time, and not about everything, but often and with a fairly wide scope. It's just a visceral pleasure for me, a good deal of the time. And, if it's not hurting anybody else, that's a fairly good reason to keep doing it. I also value lots of other things that don't have much to do with conceptual analysis--biking, guitar, sex--and I recognize that a balance is desireable (and sometimes when people ask, "Do you think too much?" this balance is exactly what they are referring to); I just don't like to oppose 'thinking' with 'living life'. I see the former as a necessary, desirable part of the latter.
Filed under:
General, Philosophy and Therapy.
K asked me recently in a comment whether I sometimes wonder if I think to much.
Short Answer: Yep.
Long Answer:
And then, because of the inherent irony in asking the question, really--should I just answer off the cuff, like in a rorschach test, or should I think about my answer? Another possible irony: The answers to this question (to me) are so intricate and lengthy that even writing an answer to it is going to take some time.
Whenever I have something I want to think about that is sort of a huge subject, I try to find a 'hook' into it. A way of beginning to think about it. There are even so many hooks regarding this that it's hard to begin. I think, though, given my recent state(s) of mind and my interest in friendship and love at the moment, that my hook will be this:
You're not the first one to ask, k. ;)
That is to say, here is a general pattern that I sometimes see with friends and lovers who tend to not stay friends and lovers (or even acquaintences who go through the process relatively quickly):
1. Meet Jeff.
2. Find yourself intrigued by some of the conceptual connections he makes, the way he tries to consciously live his life, and the interesting conversations you can have with him.
3. Spend a period of time being interested in him for these reasons.
4. (Optional--mostly optioned by ex-lovers) Slowly start to realize that you think that he's full of shit.
5. Start to become annoyed by the fact that all that stuff you liked about him, it just keeps going, without much of a break.
6. Find yourself wanting him to shut up, turn all that stuff off for just a little while, for Christ's sake.
7. Recognize that he rarely does shut up/stop that stuff, and that you can't take it any longer.
8. Ask him "do you ever think you think too much?"
9. Burn that bridge.
10. Tell him (implicitly or explicitly, depending on how close you were) you still want to be friends 'someday', but that you need a break from him.
11. Burn that bridge and don't look back.
Some of the steps get mixed around, and some of my friends (and at least one lover) didn't go through all of the stages (erm, otherwise I wouldn't have any friends, right? I mean, I'm close to that, but not quite there), but I've had it happen enough times that when somebody asks me this question, I have to make a concerted effort to not get defensive.
On the other hand, if it's been asked of me that many times, seems to me that it's probably a perfectly appropriate question. Recently (months ago) there was some mutual attraction between me and a new-ish friend of mine. We hung out a few times, and there was definitely some chemistry and we had some great conversations. At one point I brought up something she had said, and was somewhat critical of it--to me, I was critical in the sense that I wondered if she knew/thought that what she had said was sort of cruel and, well, shallow in the way that I thought it might have been. Her initial response to me: "Don't drag me into your navel-gazing bullshit." A few days later, she apologized, told me that I had (unknowingly) pushed a button of hers, and that she didn't really think of me that way.
But here's the thing: I recognize that it's irritating, that it may sometimes be self-serving, that obsessing about concepts can even be harmful--and even mean, really. I recognize that it sometimes is navel-gazing, in the negative sense of the term. I try to not obsess. I try to not ask questions that really are a way of thrusting my opinion on the world. I try to read people's reactions to my questions such that I don't keep pressing when they are tired of the tack I'm taking. But I am not always successful in these attempts, so I do get people saying things like this to me:
"Just have a beer, Jeff, and shutup."
"What is this, a fucking therapy session?"
"You're just a difficult person to be friends with."
And I don't think that these questions and comments are completely inappropriate. Something I like in some of my friends is that they'll help break me out of little recursive fits of thinking I get into. On the other hand, there are only a handful of people who will/want to go the distance with me conceptually, and, as it turns out, these are pretty much my closest friends (this isn't true to a person, but it's generally true). In fact, some of my favorite people (my favorite prof from SFSU and Lex come to mind) have more intellectual stamina for conceptual analysis than I have, so I can understand that different people have different amounts of interest/patience in doing lots of conceptual analysis, because sometimes I get tired of it, too.
That all said, I think the implication that people sometimes make (not necessarily K, by the way) when they ask this is that thinking is mutually exclusive from doing. That there is a clear line between 'thinking about life' and 'living life'. I understand the impetus for this implication. Clearly there are times when it would be better for me to just have a beer, or have a good cry; times when it's good for me to just shut up. There are even times when I wish the little conceptual-analysis voices in my head would go bowling or something and give me some peace. At the same time, I think it's important to acknowledge that thinking is a kind of doing. And I don't just mean that in a surface-y definitional sense. I also mean it in this sense: Thinking about things almost always affects how one does things. This is one of the main reasons for doing some thinking...it may seem like navel-gazing for me to ask myself questions constantly, but if the answers make a difference in my life, then I think it's worth doing.
Another aspect of the whole thinking-as-doing-something thing is that I just enjoy thinking about stuff, by myself or with others. Not all the time, and not about everything, but often and with a fairly wide scope. It's just a visceral pleasure for me, a good deal of the time. And, if it's not hurting anybody else, that's a fairly good reason to keep doing it. I also value lots of other things that don't have much to do with conceptual analysis--biking, guitar, sex--and I recognize that a balance is desireable (and sometimes when people ask, "Do you think too much?" this balance is exactly what they are referring to); I just don't like to oppose 'thinking' with 'living life'. I see the former as a necessary, desirable part of the latter.
Filed under:
General, Philosophy and Therapy.
posted by Jeff Pollet at 7:56 AM
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