Greetings. Now, have you ever heard the expression, don’t think too much? Don’t think too much.
And I always think to myself, wow, you know, gosh, I would like to think more, not think less, right? Obviously, because I honestly believe that we are into a time that there is, if you will, a war on thought. Now, we live in a curious age, right?
Tell me, we live in a time that virtually everything, when it comes to information, is accessible. If I have an idea, if I have a thought, I can go to the internet, I can utilize AI or whatever, right?
To discover the source of that information, right? And I can branch it out and I can analyze it, I can do wonderful things with that thought, with that idea. But all you have to do is have a look at anyone’s phone.
And you quickly start to realize that most people aren’t doing that. They’re not reading some book online or analyzing some great bit of scripture or whatever it is. They’re playing games.
Mindless games, usually. Or even better, they’re scrolling. They’re scrolling.
I often look over the shoulders of people, and I just watch one image, two images, three images, four images, etc. And you have to ask yourself, why? Why is this going on?
Now, if you go back in history, and we’re all students of history, right? Because we’re living in history, obviously.
So if you go back in history, and there have been times in history that we’ve had, as human beings, we’ve had a really tough time, a tough cold.
At the very end of the Western Roman Empire, and we’re given this date, which of course arbitrary, 476, they say there were maybe one or two million people living in Rome. And a hundred years later, maybe 25,000. Why?
Well, obviously, you cannot eat concrete. So when the supply system ended, you had to leave, had to go to a farm or die. And many people did die.
Starvation was rife throughout Europe. Populations collapsed, et cetera. Right?
But what made us come back? What are animalistic tendencies? No.
Throughout Europe, there were these tiny monasteries that gathered monks, of course, mostly, nuns as well, but gathered people that were able to rebuild the process of thought. Right?
And slowly but surely, we saw the flourishing above the Middle Ages. Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome and Christmas Day in 800. And we start to rebuild, always by being thoughtful people.
Right? And of course, then we come to things like, times like the Enlightenment. Right?
We suddenly like, wow, what an idea. We can do all of these various things. We can think.
Right? And maybe our relationship with God becomes a little free, but that’s okay. Because the immortal power of the universe is very patient when it comes to human beings.
Right? We’re allowed to unfold, but always we were thinking. And to be fair, there were farmers and people that lived on the farm, but even those people, for the most part, were intelligent.
They had to grow, raise families, grow crops continuously. Right? So thought was placed always in front of us.
And then if you had a bright child during the middle ages, certainly you put him into the church, right? Because that was a surefire way that he would become educated, an educated man or woman as well. Always thought.
And so then we come. Second World War, catastrophe, but then at the end of the Second World War, once again, we come out of the war and we’re a thoughtful people. And then slowly this concept of think too much.
You’re thinking too much lad, starts to creep in. And then, of course, the nail on the coffin is the internet, around 2000.
And then you have this rapid onset of information. It just streams across you. A friend of mine today was making the point between information, essentially, or intellect and intelligence, right?
So how many people do you know that have gone to university for some degree, and after they’ve finished, they’ve taken another part-time job and absolutely accomplished nothing with this degree, wasted their time fundamentally for four or six years,
just got the degree, but no thinking. Why do I go to university? Why? I don’t go to university for a degree.
But of course, degree, degree is wonderful. Nice to get them. You know, it’s kind of the reward for your hard work.
But in theory, in theory, I go to university to learn how to learn how to think, right? To learn how to learn. So what’s going on?
Well, we’ll be coming in a sense blinded by this information. So what am I to do?
What am I to do to overcome this? Well, I think I just have to be very basic at the start at the beginning, don’t I? When I first awake in the morning, I must leave my phone alone.
Leave it alone. Don’t touch the phone. And of course, most of us use it for, I’m sure for an alarm, I use it for an alarm, right?
I listen to affirmations, but no social media, zero for one or two hours. There’s a man by the name of Jim Quick, K-A-W-I-K, I recommend looking him up. He talks a lot about memory, and he says, there is no such thing as a declining memory.
It’s only an uneducated memory, if you will, right? So in other words, you can keep your memory alive, whether you’re 17 or 70, but you need to practice, right? Need to practice.
And then after this, then you avoid, of course, the scrolling, like I said earlier, and then you make a point of writing in your notebook, writing in your notebook every single day, right? And practice that observation, right?
Get out in the world, have a good look at things, because the wonderful part about thought is that anyone can do it. And you could start at any time and you can think about anything.
Observation is the great one when it comes to stimulating thought, right? For sure. And then, of course, when you do listen to the news, you’re given a piece of news, very shocking news, whatever it may be, you know?
Go once again and get the information about this. Is this true? Because a lot of what’s streaming to us is negativity in the world.
It’s not true. It’s not true. We’re actually living better than we’ve ever lived, but we will soon lose this.
I’m afraid if we’re not careful, because, you know, in a democracy, I must think to vote, right?
Supposedly, when Lincoln was elected president, he’s the man who freed black slaves in the United States, when Lincoln was elected president, the average person who could vote, and of course they were men, they had franchise, bit of money, but still
they spent around nine hours, I’ve read, nine hours on average. Now, how much time do we really spend now before we vote for someone? Nine minutes, ninety seconds, not a lot, right? So, from Aristotle, once again, happiness is a learned phenomenon.
It’s the same thing with thought. We must practice our thought, right? Must practice.
And all you have to do is do your own drop hole, like I said earlier. Get out on the street, have a look at what people are observing. And it’s terrifying, truly, because we must become, we can be more thoughtful.
We can. So why wouldn’t we be more thoughtful? Why not?
Because if we’re more thoughtful, we’re going to certainly create a much more beneficial world. And you can do this for yourself. I’m of the opinion that I’m basically alone inside my mind, to a certain extent, and in my relationship with God.
And yes, I can have a girlfriend, I can be very close with them, physically and otherwise, but they’re still not me. I know me best.
So the relationship I must have with me, I would think, you would want it to be a thoughtful relationship, because we’re streamed with this tremendous amount of information now, and it’s tremendously confusing.
I just did a survey of one of my classes, because we’re, of course, ending the semester, and the average concern across the board with all the students I teach is fear of the unknown. I don’t know what will occur in the future.
And we’ve spoken about this before, the serenity point, just concretizing time. But all of that is all about being thoughtful. So this war on thought, we have to win it, obviously.
If we’re going to change the world, which is your job and my job, right? We must make the world a better place through our individual actions, right? Through our individual actions by being models for our children and grandchildren.
Of course, that’s the job of every human generation, I believe, to leave the next generation at least in a state that they have the potential to be more thoughtful, et cetera. Now at the moment, of course, we’re in an interesting time, aren’t we?
Because not only do we have a war on thought, but we’re also supplanting thinking with this desire for money. And people are involved in the stock. People like Warren Buffett are advising young people, get involved in money.
But money is not creative, right? Money only makes, of course, money. It’s not art.
It’s not painting. It’s not philosophy. And of course, we need money.
Yes, but money to do something. And if I’m not a thoughtful person, what am I going to do with this money? Right?
How many times have you passed an individual driving a very expensive car? And you look at them and you think, how could that individual appreciate a machine of that beauty? Well, they can’t.
It’s just a status simple. It’s just to prove to their friends, look at me, I’m a wealthy human being. Right?
And where is the taste involved with this? Because most assuredly, I come into the world and I gain consciousness at around 20 years of age or so, and I want to become a better person. I want to know how to dress.
I want to know how to eat, speak another language or several other languages. Right? I want to not be a country bumpkin in my life.
I want to be a someone. There’s a beautiful word in Polish, kiepsz, which is somebody. I want to be some person, but to me, not in the sense of vanity, but just that I want to feel as if I fulfilled my mission in life.
Why am I here? What’s my mission? What happens when I leave here?
There must be a path involved with this, for sure. So think to yourself, if you’re not thoughtful at the moment, get on the path. Leave the cell phone alone, write in your notebook and contemplate.
Have a look at the bees, the bugs, the ants, other people. Become observant. Become observant.
And together, we can truly, as they say, win the war against the destruction of thought. And you know what they say, you know what they say, critical thinking is everything, especially if we’re going to win the war against the cessation of thought.
And critical thinking is right. Truly great. You take care.
God bless. Bye bye.