Incomplete Thoughts on Ideas

It’s a wonder, isn’t it, that an idea was ever had at all. Whence did one, any one, originate? How, pray tell, did it arrive? For how long, no one knows, will it stay?

Ideas must be inextricably linked to our experiences and memories. How they come together to form a new thought about something that is familiar is a mystery left for the philosophers and scientists of the world to figure out. The only thing that I know about ideas is that they are inspired by new experiences. If ever you’re stuck for an idea, try doing something different. Routine, repetition, and regularity in thinking are the enemies of ideas. Things must continue to change in order for things to continue to be different.

People enjoy habits because people like predictability. It’s not scary to know what is going to happen next. We fear the dark and the unknown because we don’t know what might emerge from within. It probably has something to do with our survival instincts. It must be that most people didn’t have time to worry about new ideas until maybe the last hundred-or-so years. The last century has seen the most change in any one-hundred-year period of all of human existence. This is not insignificant.

More people now have the time to think about ideas. They have the opportunity to create new memories through new experiences. We’ve advanced so far that we have moved into artificial realms for new experiences. We have real spaces in artificial worlds that have real impacts on real people who control artificial people. Somebody had the idea to do this.

Our love for fiction runs deep. The Sims is an extension of the novel. We all want an escape that feels real. There’s an internal logic in fiction that speaks to our need for predictability. How else would it be possible for anything to be stranger than fiction?

Our truths are told through myths and fables. Our understanding of the world is developed through analogy and metaphor. We learn one idea at a time. The fabric of our very being is stitched together one knot at a time. We use the blankets created from these threads to bring people together.

But, if every person’s experience is different that must mean that all of the ideas that anyone will ever have will necessarily be different from the ideas of anyone else. Our blanket appears to be an afghan with a loose stitch. Anyone who has ever tried to cover a protruding big toe will understand the struggle that this – the weave of ideas – creates in an attempt to find unity and comfort.


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