Principles of Thinking Challenge 2021

Weaver’s Contemplating Thinking in 33 Verses and Approximately 7 Breaths…

By January 26, 2021 February 1st, 2021 No Comments

Our ‘principles of thinking’ challenge, initially taken up by prof. Edward Nęcka in his Decalogue, has also triggered Weaver, instructor at the School of Thinking, to contribute his take on the matter.

Contemplating Thinking in 33 Verses and Approximately 7 Breaths…

by Weaver D.R. Weinbaum, 2021

❖ (inhale)
❖ Everything thinks and is being thought.
❖ (exhale)
❖ All thought emerges from non-thought (always for the first time),
❖ yet the latter does not negate the former but infinitely affirms and intensifies it.
❖ Thought progresses, evolves or devolves, via difference (variation from itself), interaction, individuation,
❖ that is, the assemblage and dissolution of shifting alliances, the emergence and resolution of incompatibilities, the formation of boundaries and distinctions thus multiple expressions.
❖ By means of their expressions, thoughts differentiate, interact and individuate.
❖ Thought as such is thus multiple, sans original, interconnected and relational, fundamentally metastable, without end or beginning.
❖ (inhale, exhale)
❖ While any thought is expressible at any instance of thinking, not all thoughts are equally expressible simultaneously,
❖ that is, certain expressions are mutually exclusive to a greater or lesser extent,
❖ which amounts to an emergent principle of coherency and consistency, or their opposition – hence, order,
❖ which amounts to the emergence of time-in-thought as expressions exclusively emerge, transform and dissolve in relation to other expressions.
❖ (exhale, inhale)
❖ For any instance of thought, the expressed constitutes its surface,
❖ that which is unexpressed remains enveloped and hidden as its depth.
❖ Depth is always pregnant with intensities and unresolved tensions.
❖ (exhale, inhale)
❖ While the surface of thought is fleeting, depth is fathomless.
❖ Between the fleeting and the fathomless time is fractal.
❖ While the surface of thought is form, therefore sensible, its depth is formless.
❖ Between form and the formless, space is fractal.
❖ While on its surface thought is increasingly distinct, its depth is increasingly confused.
❖ (inhale, exhale)
❖ Thinking takes place as the movement between depth and surface and depth…
❖ As depth rises towards the surface, it is progressively determined, becoming sensible.
❖ As surface descends into depth it becomes ambiguous, progressively losing its distinct features.
❖ Between depth and surface lurk embryonic forms, fluidly embodied, not yet fully differentiated yet differentiating…
❖ Thought eternally returns to the bosom of depth, only to arise yet again…
❖ (exhale, inhale, exhale),
❖ Thinking is real, thoughts are less.
❖ Thoughts are merely the traces thinking leaves behind.
❖ Once a thought thinks itself real it becomes a limit to thinking.
❖ This is inevitable, otherwise nothing could have existed.
❖ A thought thinks itself real once it relaxes and settles into itself, its inner tensions temporarily resolved.
❖ It progresses once from its depth it is again agitated,
❖ pushed beyond itself, beyond its self-affirmed realness,
❖ then, it ceases being real,
❖ unmade, it becomes, again, thinking…
❖ (inhale, repeat)

[In tribute to Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, The Other, The Beautiful Mind, Hades and my Muse…]