The Rational Mind

The thinking mind is ‘a machine for turning a profit’. It is there for solving problems, in other words. This is very useful at the same time as being (potentially) highly dangerous; it’s dangerous because unless there’s oversight with regard to the operation of this machine then everything straight away…

Thought is a machine for projecting problems and solutions onto the world. We then become fixated upon them: ‘if you’re not part of the solution then you must be part of the problem’, we say. Yet there are no ‘problems’ or ‘solutions’ in the world, despite our conviction to the…

Thought is like a kind of ‘extraneous module’ (or ‘optional add-on’) that interprets all the incoming information for us in a very particular way; we can picture it as a kind of ‘implanted microchip’ or ‘information-processing box’ that everything gets routed through. It mediates between us and the real world…