Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Thinking about thinking

"Fiction here is likely to contain more fiction than fact." -Virginia Woolf-

Sometimes there are sentences constructed so perfectly you want to read them again and again. They are flawless forward and backwards. They make you stop, think, and smile.

This idea had to do with the idea that some subjects don't have a truth, so that when a person states their arguments, they are really only showing what their cherished beliefs and prejudices are that make them able to pronounce this truth. Often the subject matter is controversial.

Another book I am reading very slowly, called Thinking to Some Purpose, by L. Susan Stebbing, discusses the idea that it is very important to keep in mind your own habits and emotional tendencies, as well as the person or group of people who formed the idea you are thinking about whenever you ponder an idea. Its funny that I distinctly remember teachers in my early education pushing the idea that everyone perceives things differently depending on their own individual point of view. I didn't pay much attention to this idea and lumped it in with the activity in which everyone became a colour that corresponded to their personality. (I could never actually decide on how to define myself and so I was a different colour every year. The activity suceeded in confusing me even more rather than teaching me anything about myself.) However, I can't stress enough how important I now believe it is to try and keep in mind your point of view along with other people's points of view. Otherwise, you are likely to have quite a lonely existence.




This is what a room of one's own might look like.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I always liked those personality tests, especially when teachers would argue afterwards that my results were impossible. Like the Introvert/Extrovert test, where I came out EXACTLY in the middle of both, with no tendancy to one side or the other. (I was told that I answered the test questions wrong when I got that.)

Oh, and my colour was always Gold, but that's probably more because that was the colour I wanted to get, and the questions are pretty easy to manipulate.