This talk refreshes me. I agree that many in our generation have an aversion to intelligence. I was lucky to go to schools which weren't your typical American Public School scene, and to grow up in a very liberal town, Ann Arbor. Still, the stupidity and ignorance of our species shines through everywhere...Let me tell you High Schoolers: college is way better.
How I think: Very broadly, a mix of images, of all senses, words, and an intuitive "structural" sense, which is best described as Pure Concept. My Pure Concept thought is difficult to describe...it goes beyond words and images, and seems more like a "felt sense", although I direct and influence it quite purposively. It happens when I arrive at what I can only call the root, or archetype of a phenomena. I gain the sense that I understand the subject/object thoroughly. Part of this feeling is a seemingly contradictory assurance that even if I don't really remember everything about a subject/object that I can summon it up on demand...the specific facts derive from this understanding as necessary or called upon. There also appear to be gradations of this Pure Concept experience. For instance, after a session of insight meditation I can carry over the elevated faculties and experience of sensory enlargement into a very focussed, but 'philosophical' meditation, which often culminates in a more powerful experience of the Pure Concept. These thought exercises are more productive than when I approach them from my looser, less disciplined "every-day" mind-state, as I experience a heightened sense of concentration and energy. This type of thinking started, in its looser elements from a very early age-- not surprisingly I was one of those kids who rarely felt bored. It only developed to where it is now after focussed meditation practice and application. Now I feel the experience of the Pure Concept to be vital to any "full" understanding of any phenomena. I have also recently found a similar thinker in the poet/scientist/rennaisance-man Goethe, who, I believe, had a similar thought-process, and from whom I shed considerable light on my own. I still aspire to his levels of refinement, though. I hope this was somewhat understood. In addition to what I have mentioned, I apply certain philosophical tools to my thought to help clarify it as needed, such as Logic, General Semantics, and Deconstruction. Those 'principles' usually come as a blend of words/Pure Concept, and to a certain extent, have become integral to my thoughts in the first place, i.e. my thinking often begins from a Semantically Cognizant, Deconstructed and somewhat Logical orientation. I say "somewhat" because logic is not some eternally-true forever-self-evident presupposition of correct thought, it is a tool for clarifying causality, where our thinking can do so. It is only the FAITH of Aristotle that we could ever formulate a perfectly consistent, rigorously logical - in the formal sense- account of the universe. That's my lengthy post for the day.
Peace,
K.O.
