When we suffer, do we make it worse by thinking about it? This question sits at the heart of how we understand the very nature of human pain–and points toward ancient wisdom we’ve forgotten in our modern rush to analyze, optimize, and solve every difficulty we encounter.
There is something about hunting for taxis that activates something spiritual within me.
In the United States, there’s no longer such a concept. If you want a taxi, you’re going to have to use a rideshare app, and the taxi will come right to you. In Tunisia, rideshare apps do exist, but it’s much more effective to hunt for taxis the old-fashioned way. If a taxi is available, it has a red light on the dashboard; if occupied, a green light. It seems counterintuitive, but once you get the hang of it, you won’t think twice about it.
In peak hours, taxis are exceedingly difficult to find. Of course, you’ll see physical taxis everywhere, but they have the little green light that means you can’t use them–they’re busy taking someone else. Sometimes, I can wait up to an hour hunting for a taxi; very rarely, I can wait longer.
I stand on the street, wondering about my own sense of agency: Am I in the ideal location to find a driver? What if I stand on the other side of the street? If I go to a place that is more central, will I find more taxis–or will there be greater competition with others? Moreover, if I leave this spot, will one appear as if by summons? Would it be better to request a ride on a rideshare app, or will they be too expensive? Will the act of requesting one cause a standard taxi to appear, as if compelled by some atemporal, aspatial beacon?
It’s a strange experience. I stand there knowing that taxi drivers are driven by the same economic forces of the rest of us. There are only a set number of taxis in the city of Tunis, and–during rush hour–there are high numbers of people seeking out rides. The logics of supply and demand play out in real time. Moreover, resources are skewed: if drivers know that individuals in one neighborhood are more likely to travel longer distances, they will go there, as the fare will be higher. If there is a region that tends to experience traffic jams, they will dodge it.
Even so, when I’m standing on the street, waiting for the possibility of transportation, these abstract notions of markets and resources don’t matter. I wonder what magical power I might have to change these circumstances. What little actions might lead to a chain of events that bring me home?
I suspect that this psychological drive to have agency over our conditions is one of the major driving forces in belief in sympathetic magic. Sympathetic magic is the belief that you can influence something by using a similar, but unrelated, object or action. Like affects like.
Peoples, and those living in time periods, with restricted agency tend to be much more inclined toward magical thinking. Had I been raised in a different age, might I have not been the same?
I love the idea of the Indie Web. When I first began writing this blog last year, I had made a post about how much I missed the “old internet” before it was taken over by venture capitalists. Even Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit were good ideas at first, but their tactics have made them into a challenge to overcome rather than a social space.
The Indie Web terminology for sites like these are a “silo.” Rather than engage closely with the web as a network, they are closed spaces that draw in users. It is only possible to participate in discussions if you are already a user on the site (good luck being seen if you try to write about them from outside). Moreover, their linking tactics privilege content that is already on the website. On LinkedIn, for example, the algorithm privileges blog entries and posts that are written for the site, rather than links to pages outside of it. Facebook has also captured a great deal of engagement through the creation of groups.
Unfortunately, these websites sell your data and turn you into a product. They are better understood as advertisers than as social media platforms.
In the past week, two blog posts have asked the question: “When do you do your best thinking?” Gabriele Girelli pitched the question on his blog, and his place is the shower. David at Forking Mad responded in the same way: the shower.
I remember, for the longest time, the shower would be where I did most of my thinking as well. I’m not sure what happened, but shower thoughts these days tend to fall right out of my head. By the time I leave the shower, I’ve lost them. Instead, most of my thinking comes in two other forms.
I think a lot when I move: it doesn’t matter if I’m walking, running, or bicycling. The very act of movement allows my mind to drift, and I put the pieces together to come up with my own ideas. There is something about the process of movement that allows neurons to fire in new ways, at least for me. It draws out connections that might have not otherwise been there. Is it the different stimulus? Is it the repetition of a single set of motions? I’m not sure, but it makes a big difference to me.
The other time is when I begin to write. Although I can write on the computer, I find that my ideas are far more original when I use traditional pen and paper. When I begin to write, I have no idea where my ideas will take me. They seem to come out of a place unknown to me: perhaps this is what the Hellenes referred to when they said that creativity was given to them by the Muses, and what early Christian thinkers referred to as “spirit.”
For the longest time, I thought that serious thinking required developing wholly original ideas. I’ve found instead that good ideas come out of synthesizing many different perspectives: two ideas are compared, played with, and brought together. I attempt to release the limitations of both ideas while including their strengths.
I think a lot of my ideas also emerge in conversing with others. It is unclear to me whether it is the process of talking that creates< the idea, or if it allows me to define an idea that I never even knew I had. One way or another, it is important to me.
What about you, where do you do your thinking? What does your process look like?
I came across a brief reflection by V. H. Belvadi asking if we remember the books we’ve read, and he includes a beautiful quote by Emerson. It’s an interesting question–and an important one. I’m not sure that any of us can remember everything we’ve read, nor should we desire to. Otherwise, we wouldn’t want to re-read the same passages and texts over and over again.
Even so, I have a tendency to track everything that I read in Zotero, adding little notes about what was important. Moreover, I journal as I read–I don’t hold onto everything; I prefer to pull out what Hannah Arendt calls “thought fragments.” These are little pieces that help me make sense of the world. For instance, Nietzsche’s discussion of the cult of Dionysius is one that I’ve found helpful in understanding rock music.
Rather than trying to read as much as we can (as quickly as we can)–something that academics pride themselves on–it is better to slow down and read reflectively. Only by doing so can we unweave threads of meaning that we can use to live better in our own lives. Even works that are fundamentally expository can tell us something profound about our own lives.
In a recent essay, I discussed an interpretation of Moses that is not found at all in Judaism or Christianity. In both of those faiths, he is the giver of law and the leader of a national community. He is unable of doing wrong: his people fail, as when they create the golden calf, as do his siblings, but he upholds God’s will to the greatest extent possible.
