Question6.com: The gist of our life
Our body keeps us attached to the material world. It is a good place to start developing our thinking. It may not be a good place to stay.
We pretend to dominate the universe with our intellect. That could be a bad case of the Dunning–Kruger effect.
People who know very little think that they are the experts. If we cannot control our thinking - Who does?
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantial new way of thinking if humankind is to survive.
-Albert Einstein
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena; it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
– Nikola Tesla.
“The time has come to realize that supersensible knowledge has now to arise from the materialistic grave.”
Rudolf Steiner
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier, and simpler.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
-Shakespeare
5 - Human thinking is not enough
Thinking is as natural to man as breathing, eating, and moving. Thinking is what differentiates humans from animals. Whether we like it or not, we must think. Sometimes, we even think about something we don’t want to think about. It starts with the information that we receive from our senses. We are inclined to think about what we can see. This is the domain of the predilection of science. We want to discover the laws of nature surrounding us.
There is something special about human thinking. It is that we can ‘think about our thinking.’ When we make a calculation mistake, we must look for a ‘thinking mistake’ and correct it. This is thinking about our thinking.
Imagine a society entirely dominated by logical thinking. Making decisions that cannot be justified would send you to a psychiatric hospital run by robots using AI. They would not call it ‘Artificial Intelligence’. They would call it ‘Intelligence’. It would be a society doing many things without any feelings - such as atomic bombs.
If your parents only give you ideas without any feeling, you will feel frustrated, and rightly so. The child needs feelings more than ideas.
You may ask yourself: “What would give my children a better chance to be happy? Is it to be good at mathematics or to be a good dancer? Thinking can help you pass an exam, but there is much more to learn. An education based on thinking alone would replace freedom with rules. You would suffocate.
What else do we need? Is it feelings? Intuition? Increased consciousness? Common sense? What do you think planet Earth uses to keep all those plants growing and animals alive? Is she using thinking? Instinct? The law of nature surrounds us? That does not mean that there is nothing else in our environment. In a conflict between ideas and feelings, the feelings will prevail.
Thinking feeds on facts. It uses logic to process information. Intuition feeds on emotions and our relationship with other people. A little love could solve many problems.
Intuition does not have the limitations of our thinking. There is no need for reasoning. There is no need to assemble ideas to go from A to B. Intuition is direct knowledge. You fly from A to B. You KNOW that you are in danger or that somebody is not trustworthy. You KNOW that this car is going to change lanes. You KNOW that something is not safe. It is through intuition that we relate to our pets, to the forest, to the flowers, to the sunset, to music… It is also the most powerful way to relate to each other.
Thinking isolates. Intuition unites.
Not only is our intuition very limited, but we discredit it. If a woman wants to justify buying a dress, she will not say: “I fell in love with that color.” She would rather say: “I have nothing to wear - It was on sale - Matches the color of my shoes…”. She knows that she needs an explanation that will be accepted, and intuition is not one of them.
Let’s keep the thinking where it belongs. It is very well adapted to making a chain of ideas based on facts. Our thinking was born from our interactions with the material world. It started with our ancestors’ making tools. At that stage, we were guided by the laws of nature. It was a safe place to start. As human thinking became more elaborate, we distanced ourselves from nature. We wanted to be free, including freeing ourselves from the laws of nature. This is a growing problem. We are replacing the laws of nature with intuition. Women seem more gifted than men in this domain. They know that men should not be left alone. If someday you find it difficult to choose between feelings and ideas, go for the feelings. They come from a level above us. Chances are that they are more in ‘alignment’ with nature.
We need a mixture of thinking, common sense, intuition, ideas, instinct, hunch, and presentiment. We could call it ‘consciousness’. If we could be fully conscious of everything surrounding us, this increased consciousness could replace the verification by experiments.
We could make better use of our brains.
The bird blackpoll warbler can fly non-stop for 3 days.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Blackpoll_Warbler/overview
There is a possibility that some birds have a brain divided into two halves. One side is asleep while they use the other side to keep flying.
The Homo sapiens may be scheduled for something similar in their evolution. A connection could develop between the two sides (the corpus callosum), making a constant dialogue between their sleeping and waking activities possible.
Are you sure that we are not getting close already? We have a brain divided into two halves. The most difficult is already done. We already have some communication between the two sides. We only need to amplify a process already in use – like we developed agriculture.