Well.
Be prepared. I almost always open with a quote but today I open with a sentence … a 198 word sentence written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr <father of US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.>:
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Many times, when I have got upon the cars, expecting to be magnetized into an hour or two of blissful reverie, my thoughts shaken up by the vibrations into all sorts of new and pleasing patterns, arranging themselves in curves and nodal points, like the grains of sand in Chladni’s famous experiment,—fresh ideas coming up to the surface, as the kernels do when a measure of corn is jolted in a farmer’s wagon,—all this without volition, the mechanical impulse alone keeping the thoughts in motion, as the mere act of carrying certain watches in the pocket keeps them wound up,—many times, I say, just as my brain was beginning to creep and hum with this delicious locomotive intoxication, some dear detestable friend, cordial, intelligent, social, radiant, has come up and sat down by me and opened a conversation which has broken my day-dream, unharnessed the flying horses that were whirling along my fancies and hitched on the old weary omnibus-team of every-day associations, fatigued my hearing and attention, exhausted my voice, and milked the breasts of my thought dry during the hour when they should have been filling themselves full of fresh juices.
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So.
When I read this sentence <read it several times in fact> I thought of “filling up” and “emptying out.”
Huh?
Oliver Sr. was no dumb shit. His brain was filled with more “kernels of knowledge sand” than most of us will ever be filled with. And, yet, he outlines how the knowledge works best when emptied of structured thinking and any specific destination but rather when “without volition” new thoughts are unharnessed by old learning rearranged.
Couple lessons in that:
- New thinking is almost always simply a new way of looking at something everybody already knows.
- In an age of instant gratification, smartphone access to any answer you would ever want and a belief that the fastest answer is the best answer it is good to remember that thinking is like baking. You have ingredients and you need to properly bake them to arrive at something special.
This isn’t to suggest that there is no hurry but rather you use the allotted time in the best possible way.
I worry more about the latter than I do the former in today’s world.
I worry about it because thinking is more often like what someone referred to Emerson’s writing as “a chaos full of shooting-stars, a jumble of creative forces.”
That is thinking.
Thinking doesn’t pretend to follow rules, enact some methodology or even use 
the words it is ‘supposed to use.’
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unharnessed the flying horses that were whirling along
my thoughts shaken up by the vibrations into all sorts of new and pleasing patterns, arranging themselves in curves and nodal points, like the grains of sand
fresh ideas coming up to the surface, as the kernels do when a measure of corn is jolted in a farmer’s wagon
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And more often than not, in an attempt to be more efficient in a time constrained world, we try and micro-structure our thinking.
It seems like as the world became more enlightened by mass media, structured education systems and “college for all” we have become … well … more sensible in our thinking.
Which brings me back to my opening sentence.
It breaks all the rules of not only how to write but how to think.
And, yet, it captures the essence of thinking … it certainly captures the magic of thinking … and, unfortunately to the thinking methodology Nazis, it certainly captures the practicality of freedom in thinking.
Our world today is strewn with catchy incorrect memes, rewritten history, faulty logic and misleading statistics all offered to us out of context.
The internet, while offering us a boundless offering of truth & facts, has only encouraged sloppy, lazy thinking.
It should be enlightening us but, far too often; it actually encourages some fairly absurd unenlightened thinking.
Thinking, and I mean real thinking, can cure this unenlightened cancer. The cancer is not social media or this absurd love of brevity … it is us and our thinking.
In thoughtful moments I tend to believe people know this. They know social media and smartphones and the internet is not the problem … it is us. Yeah. All those things make us susceptible to these wacky conspiracy theories, false statistics and alternative facts but they do not live unless we breathe life into them.
Look.
I do worry about thinking on occasion. Shit. I have even written about how I cried about thinking in today’s world.
I have a number of friends who send me memes and out of context quotes to make a point and ask me my view.
I probably send more time fact correct and making people aware of truth than I do sharing my own opinion. That worries me. in fact this is a direct quote from me:
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But here is what really worries me.
If you, not a dumb guy by any stretch of the imagination, can truly believe even 75% of what you shared with me then what does the everyday schmuck believe?
That is what worries me.
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Thinking does take time and some space and … well … even some work <even if that work is to find empty space and not working>.
And, even then, the problem is that you can search the internet far and wide without finding a clear repudiation of some falsely stated, good sounding piece of untrue crap.
In fact.
If you do spend some time researching something you will more likely find a massive gap between public belief and expert knowledge.
There is often such a delusional gap between reality and “belief” it often seems absurd … and absurdly difficult to bridge the gap.
We need more thinking today than ever before. And, sadly, we need more thinking on simpler things than ever before.
Oliver Sr. was thinking on big things and big thoughts. And we need people like that.
What worries me is that in today’s world we need more people doing more thinking on the kernels of corn, the grains of sand and the horses themselves.
I worry about that because if we don’t have more people doing that kind of thinking all we will end up doing is rearranging unfortunately misguided untrue kernels of corn, fake grains of sand and unicorns not horses.
I imagine my real point today is that effective thinking is dependent upon tow things:
- insuring we have lots of “true grains” of sand in our heads <not alternative facts or falsehoods>
- insuring we have some time to properly jostle the kernels of corn <or grains of sand if you don’t want me to mix my metaphors> to rearrange them in new configurations
I don’t believe the world, society or any business wants us rearranging lies, fake and unicorns in order to form a better union.
topics discussed these days – with both Trump voters and non-Trump voters.
my guess is maybe 15 million, truly deplorable people in the USA … say maybe 6% of adults. Here is the bad news … we tend to suggest those 6% are representative of all Trump voters <as well as all that is ignorant, deplorable and bad about USA>.
15%.
30%.
opening quote is awesome <although, geologically speaking, it may not be truly accurate>.
what you are supposed to do really matters <a lot>.
running hard. Shit. I have never met a business that said “well, we don’t believe in running hard … we are walkers.”
that some competitor is doing some magical thing better than we are.”
really is hard … we get better at explaining how this change we are asking them to do … is easier than they may perceive every day. Sometimes we have to weave our way through objections and sometimes we have to hammer our way through objections … but everyone, every sales person, service person, management, support staff and anyone who interacts with current and potential customers are doing their part today and doing even better the day after.
Its also <slightly> interesting I used an Ayn Rand quote to open a thought on business leadership.
I point out the vision and instincts aspects because it is that ‘dance’ which … well … can make a business dance. Some people talk about strategy & tactics but this is a little different. This is kind of a step up from that.
aspect but had an incredibly strong sense of ‘right versus wrong’ with regard to business philosophy and excellent instincts which tended to permit a shitload of progress <if not particularly visionary progress>. I would note he was pretty good at hiring some people who were visionary and combined with what he was good at he had a nice ability <albeit sometimes a lite too pragmatic> to tighten some loose vision and … well … get shit done.
some topic and make a statement and 99% of the time the other person will say <usually indignantly> “where did you hear that?” … and I could say “well, Albert Einstein said it” … and I can almost guarantee I will get the following question … “when did he say that?” … and if I said “well, he said it on <pick your poison … FoxNews, MSNBC, CNN, NYTimes, Washington Post, etc>” … I can almost guarantee I will get a ‘lean-back-in-chair-moment combined with a sage “oh, he is biased.”
We live in a wacky world in which we have no experts, we trust no institutions to not have some nefarious intent and truth is in the eyes of the beholder.
The only places in which Trump’s numbers rose versus Obama are … uhm … Russia <which rose a staggering 43 points, 11% to 54% confidence>and Israel. And, I would note, that despite the common perception Obama was loathed by Israel, Obama’s confidence ratings varied from 49% to 71% during his administration as compared to Trump’s current 58%.
international numbers should make anyone and everyone take a moment and pause.
Which leads me to my point <other than expressing some sadness> … a word to the wise <and even a 
often argues that words don’t matter and behavior is more important.
Look.
collusion or coordination of efforts between anything I will outline and the Trump campaign. The analysis of that will be done by greater minds than mine.
number you want depending on your cynicism but suffice it to say the US Intelligence agencies are aligned in some form or fashion> agreed Russia was fucking within our election. They didn’t go into details but rather just said “they, they are doing this” <and did some behind the scenes stuff to deflect some things they did>.
These honeypots often appear as friends on social media sites, sending direct messages to their targets to lower their defenses through social engineering. After winning trust, honeypots have been observed taking part in a range of behaviors, including sharing content from white and gray active measures websites
trail led to Macedonia and Albania. In mid-September, he emailed a few of his private investigator friends with a list of the sites. “Very creepy and i do not think Koch brothers,” he wrote.
in the oval office.
agree upon … “be honest, don’t lie.”
said? nay, worse yet, to lie against a man’s own knowledge? 
Oddly enough … honesty takes more work than lies.
He’s obviously right — lying destroys trust and destroys bonds. And they do so in sometimes little sneaky ways dissolving or loosening little threads holding us together. And, yes, sometimes they just cut all threads and you ‘lose’ whatever you had as it floats away on the restless sea of Life.
reality is reality. just like facts are facts. It is what it is and you can either face it or ignore it … but it will be there regardless of whether you look or not.
The first is to accept his behavior as normal and permit it to become more normal outside the purview of the oval office and on our tween/teen smartphones, in the classrooms, on softball and soccer fields, in the bars and in the office.
