Promiscuous thinking, I'm coming

When are you the most creative? For me, I have always though that it is at night when I have some quiet and time to wash away the day and can immerse myself in the space and silence, but I think that this might not be the case. Instead, I believe I just might be much more productive at night, more active and what I thought was my point of creativity is actually the pinnacle of it, where the process has been ongoing the entire day.

Creative foreplay.

Do you partake?

Since I was a teen I think I have engaged in promiscuous thinking, you know, where thoughts bang each other and give birth to other thoughts. While sometimes the innovation might be planned, accidents happen and unintentional thoughts can come together and generate surprises. I believe that these might be the most valuable of thoughts as they take the intentional processing out of it and bring in a degree of randomness and lack of direction that can uncover hidden potential.

To have promiscuity of thought, many thinking partners are needed and what that means is many sources and preferably a diverse mix of perspectives and positions. Something that I fear we are becoming is homogeneous in thought and while many people might not feel this and argue against it, I would say that the evidence can be found in between the polarization.

Public discourse is becoming increasingly clique-based in order to make it clickbait. It is all about choosing a side in order to score points against the opposition and once the drama dies away, move onto the next trending topic that we know nothing about, other than a headline and an emotional reaction. The evidence that points toward homogeneity of thought I speak of between this polarization, is the lack of nuance, where it is either on or off, right or wrong, with all of the complication and condition sensitivity stripped away.

People tend to forget that the entire internet is curated with the popular topics landing on screens and those topics are chosen for their compelling nature, their drama, their shareability, their virality. And, we as the average consumer are not only the hosts, we are the willing hosts that distribute the disease as it makes us feel attractive and part of the conversation, despite our lack of real knowledge and even less understanding.

Because of these large information containers that are dumped onto the average audience, we get swamped with data and what is valuable can be lost and what is attractive becomes our main source of nutrition. Masses of people all taking part in the same conversations, eating the same arguments and using the same defenses, depending on what side of whatever drama is currently in the trendlight.

Yet, people seemingly do not stop to think about whether what they are discussing has any bearing on their life direction or if it generates anything of value for anyone at all. Sure, you might love to rant about how brilliant or foolish Trump is as a person or president, but what does that do for you and the things you care about?

How I see it is that most of the discussions in the mainstream media are designed as busy work so that people do not wake up and see what is actually going on in their lives and perhaps, do something to actually improve them.

It has a feedback loop that is driven by the media to create outrage, that creates clicks which then spread and disseminates the information widely and more senseless people jump on due to social proof and bandwagoning, and this legitimizes the group and makes it a movement, which spurs the media to cover more, which then will ultimately attract opposing views that will drive the conversation further apart and fragment it into a polarized state of outrage, that can be leveraged again by those who control the narrative.

The more people engage in these kinds of conversations, the more personally relevant they feel, even though their lives have likely gained very little at all - while narrowing their perspectives and positions so that they are in various information silos that reinforce their own learned world view. It is hard to innovate when you only have one view and that view is supported by the immersion into a tailored and engineered environment.

Culture is the collection of stories we hold as a group and while once upon a time the diversity and distribution of stories were highly variable, now we lie in a world where most know Game of Thrones, most where Nikes and there is a McDonald's on every corner - and a Starbucks on the other. This narrowing of culture and forming of groups is fantastic.

It is fantastic for generating value and moving wealth through the manipulation of group behavior from the hands of the many into the pockets of the few. It is fantastic as a control mechanism as influence and incentive can be blanket injected into a group with predictable results in behavior. It is fantastic for creating a consumer base that will never be able to stand on their own feet as they will have lived supported by convenience and access to the best creative minds the world has to offer - so good they are that no one need think at all.

We have created a world where there is an incentive to be right and to be right is only a Google search away - but there is no incentive to be wrong and the learning through experience and failure is the pathway to mastery. As I see it, those who live the most valuable lives for society are also the ones who are wrong much of the time, but are always sniffing out the pathway to right.

The core creators of value are the promiscuous thinkers who will face their fears and say, fuck it - and venture out of their comfort zones. The adventurous of mind who don't mind having unprotected group thoughts.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]