In principle, I hate and despise the animal called man, although I sincerely love specifically Jack, Peter, Tom, and so on … I was convinced that the definition «man is a rational animal» is false and somewhat premature. Correctly formulate: «man is an animal receptive to reason …»
My neighbor Aunt Yulia, my dearest and most beloved person, can speak and do a huge bunch of necessary things, without turning on her brains at all. Why think when you can just react?
To think is to know what you want, and to do (say) what will give the desired result.
She comes to visit — her speech turns on (a certain text with absolutely indifferent content about what), her hands are automatically ready to turn on, for example, “wash the dishes”, and the body itself moves after other moving bodies.
The mechanicalness and inevitability of its physicality is simply impressive.
Thinking as the ability to think, however, is present in her, and if you put her on a stool, sit right in front of her, take her hands in yours and find phrases that play the role of key ones, she can wake up. She really wakes up. A meaningful expression appears in her eyes, then she can even be silent, and then say something non-random.
Do you remember what Swift wrote about the Claymenol flappers waking up the Laputians? This is being accomplished.
She will think for a while. Later, however, it inevitably gets tired, descends, puts it on autopilot and turns off. Although he continues to live actively and do everything.
There are, however, more severe cases. Tanya, the director of a large children’s and youth leisure and creative center, is the nicest person, an ascetic at work and at the same time just a fool. She never thought, she categorically does not know how to do this, and she cannot explain this, because she has nothing to understand what it is. This never happened to her.
She was told how to do exercises — she will do it according to the instructions, without looking at the mood of those involved. If she is told that she is doing exercises incorrectly, she will be confused at first, and then she will light up and ask for the correct instruction in order to learn it. She always only reproduces what she was told or what she read.
Her five-year-old daughter is convinced that children are found in cabbages. “Mom told me! Now I know it!”
And the eyes are hard.
The way mother Tanya herself cognizes the world differs a little: “You know, I didn’t know what God was before, and then I read in a very smart book:“ God is the sun’s rays. And now I know it!”
Unlike Aunt Yulia, I didn’t manage to turn on Tanya’s mother and bring her to thinking — not once. I repeat, I got the impression that it completely lacks this function.
It is unlikely that a competent psychologist will see any news for himself in these simple notes: what I state was also written by dozens of my other practicing colleagues. For example, in the language of Eric Berne’s transactional analysis, «thinking» is to take the position of an Adult who has risen above the living (in this case — thoughtless) emotional immediacy of the Child and mindlessly learned (and also reproduced) instructions from the Parent.
Read, remember.
But then the natural question is: how often does a person take the position of an Adult, how often does a person begin to think? Considering that teaching a person to turn on his Adult is the goal of the psychotherapist’s long and difficult work, the answer is clear: a normal person rarely thinks. Most of the time of his life, he just lives, splashing out his Child and the tambourine of his Parent.
Right?
Question
Q: What will people say about you? You think? Do you often think — given that in today’s life it is not necessary to do this at all? And if you think, then why? I repeat — you can live thoughtlessly. To live thoughtlessly is perhaps even easier… Why are you doing this? Only in order to be — after all, Human?