MORE OR LESS THINKING
Navigating human suffering by using reason and contemplation to understand the nature of our minds.
We can eliminate unnecessary human suffering by (1) thinking more and (2) thinking less—the danger comes when we fall into our default mode of thought, which rests apathetically between the two.
To understand this, think about the analogous problem of physical well-being. We know that our bodily health mainly depends on (1) exercising and (2) sleeping—the danger comes when we fall into our default mode of lounging in front of the TV (I learned this the hard way when I binged Season 1 of the Handmaid’s Tale).
On the surface, the idea that we can eliminate suffering by both thinking more and thinking less appears to be a logical contradiction; it’s actually a paradox. Try an experiment: for the next 20 seconds, focus on the following word without letting any other thoughts arise: apple.
If you happened to survive that grenade of random thoughts, you now know how little control we have over what arises in our minds. In reality, our thoughts think themselves.
Sure, you can deliberately make yourself think about the apple on your desk, but in the next moment, your mind will wander through a series of thoughts you didn’t intend. This seems to be the reality of consciousness. Some even take this reality to mean that free will is an illusion [1]. Our thoughts influence our lives more than anything else, and yet, we aren’t their creator.
As much as we can control some of our thoughts, the vast majority seem to appear out of nowhere like that crazy distant relative who’s always popping in unannounced. Just when you think you’ve banished him by locking the front door, he comes in through your bedroom window. Unfortunately, you live in a house with an infinite number of doors and windows. Good luck.
Now, try a different exercise. Think about September 11, 2001. If you were to add up the collective and accumulative suffering caused by the events of that day, assuming there was a way to quantify it, how much would there be?
Now think about the root cause of that suffering. The obvious one is terrorism. But what spawned those acts of terrorism? Ignorance and dogma. Ignorance that led to hatred; hatred that led to suffering.
So, what’s the most dangerous threat to human well-being? The science points to what is referred to as mind-wandering or default thinking, which I’ve termed more or less thinking. This phrase is useful because it contains within itself the two remedies: (1) thinking more and (2) thinking less.
The previous 9/11 example was strategically drastic, but we repeat this ignorant pattern of causing suffering in our everyday human existence, albeit at smaller scales. You hastily rebuke your doctor for being late to your sick child’s appointment, blind to the fact that he just saved another kid’s life down the hall.
Suffering arises when we don’t see the world clearly. One of the remedies to this suffering is thinking more — using scientific discovery, reason, and dialogue to recognize our “paradigms of the past for the intellectual straightjackets they were [2].”
When we’re not trying to see the world more clearly through reason and discussion — that is, thinking more — we’d be wise to focus on clearing the mind, observing thoughts without judging or attaching to them, and meditating — that is, thinking less. The danger lies in sliding into the middleground where our default state of mind leads us to more or less thinking.
Remarkably, modern science is beginning to corroborate a reality that contemplatives have been teaching for more than 2,500 years. Mindfulness meditation leads to real physical changes in your brain’s structure — improving concentration, reducing anxiety and depression, helping overcome addiction, preserving the brain, and reducing “me” thinking [3]. The science is still young, but promising.
When we’re engaged in more or less thinking, on the other hand, our minds run wild with false narratives. Over time, letting your brain entertain these falsities makes it increasingly difficult to sort out reality and see the world as it is. Ideas get “under your skin, simply by sticking around long enough. Once an idea is hardwired, you might not be in a position to easily reject it [4].”
The concept of more or less thinking is essentially a mental map for understanding why we suffer unnecessarily. The purpose of the More or Less Thinking publication is to explore how our brains tell us lies about ourselves and the world around us; lies we often take at face value.
Deep scientific reasoning and mindful contemplation are the only hope for understanding the nature of our minds and navigating through the human condition to greater happiness and morality—the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, and more or less thinking is no longer enough.
Sources
[1]
Harris, S. (2012). Free will. New York: Free Pr.
[2]
Givens, T., & Givens, F. (2014). The crucible of doubt: Reflections on the quest for faith. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book.
[3]
Luders, E., Cherbuin, N., & Kurth, F. (2015). Forever Young(er): Potential age-defying effects of long-term meditation on gray matter atrophy. Frontiers in Psychology,5, 15–51. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01551
Mrazek, M. D., Franklin, M. S., Phillips, D. T., Baird, B., & Schooler, J. W. (2013). Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering. Psychological Science,24(5), 776–781. doi:10.1177/0956797612459659
Blanck, P., Perleth, S., Heidenreich, T., Kröger, P., Ditzen, B., Bents, H., & Mander, J. (2018). Effects of mindfulness exercises as stand-alone intervention on symptoms of anxiety and depression: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy,102, 25–35. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2017.12.002
Tang, Y., Tang, R., & Posner, M. I. (2013). Brief meditation training induces smoking reduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,110(34), 13971–13975. doi:10.1073/pnas.1311887110
Brewer, J. A., Worhunsky, P. D., Gray, J. R., Tang, Y., Weber, J., & Kober, H. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,108(50), 20254–20259. doi:10.1073/pnas.1112029108
[4]
Barrett, L. F. (2018). How Emotions Are Made. Pan Books.
