Curious Realizer - is solo thinking impossible?

An idea has been bothering me for awhile so why not write about it

Photo by Anthony Tori on Unsplash

I read something a couple of months ago I haven’t been able to accept. It’s a quote by Alan Jacobs from his book How To Think:

To think independently of other human beings is impossible... Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social. Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said.

Note that I’m using an abbreviated version of the quote that was Tweeted a few years ago by artist-author Austin Kleon, who has also used this same quote in his book Keep Going. Kleon further elaborated on Jacobs’ point to say that there are like-minded people who will probably just reinforce the thoughts that are already in your head but you may also encounter (as Jacobs calls them) like-hearted people who may not share many (if any) of your ideas but who do share common values.

I kind of get the point that these two fellows are making: our thoughts are constantly impacted by our interactions with other people. Solo creativity is hard without external inspiration, which can come from talking to other writers, artists, musicians, actors, and so on. Through conversation we can be turned on to new things and we can be persuaded to change our opinions. We can be encouraged and discouraged by the thoughts of other people. This happens during work and play.

But are we dependent upon other people to generate new thoughts? I want to say no but there are two huge caveats:

1. From infancy through childhood a person needs interaction with other people to learn language and social skills, the building blocks for learning, cognition and communication. Clearly children need guidance to learn communicate with other people and to learn reasoning beyond simple survival rules like don’t stick your tongue to a metal rail on a cold day or don’t touch a hot stove. They need help to learn more complicated thinking and meta-cognition: children need to be taught how about abstract concepts which are not based on empirical evidence, or at least not based on the empirical evidence easily gathered by our five main senses.

2. Similarly, the types of teachers we need will vary over time and our career aspirations, whether it’s work in the trades, athletics, business, academics, etc. Teachers impart knowledge but they are also guides to help gain knowledge and skills in the most efficient and effective manner: they provide syllabi and methods. So yes, the mentor/student relationship is an important way whereby thinking is somewhat social, as is the continuing parent/child relationship, the manager/employee relationship, the doctor/patient relationship and so on.

But at some point a person is going to fail if they are unable to perform an independent thought. You can’t be taught every possible answer to every possible question and you won’t always have an expert at your beck and call. A person will inevitably get into a situation (like being lost, in a car accident, moving into their first apartment) where there’s no one else to help them and they must think their own thoughts and accept the consequences.

But here’s the thing, and if I’m being honest, there is a loophole which ultimately proves me wrong and both Jacobs and Kleon correct. But it’s a bit subtle and it requires us to bend the use of the word social a bit.

The loophole is the use of the written or spoken words to convey information, paired with the audiovisual aids of choice.

Here’s an example: let’s say I want to write a novel and I don’t know whether to use first-person or third-person point of view to tell the story. Let’s also assume that I don’t personally know anyone who writes novels who I can ask for advice and I live hours away from a school or library. But I do have Internet access and I know how to use a Web browser, plus I can get any book I want by mail. So, clever person that I am, I do Web searches about point of view AND I buy some books about writing. I review all of this information (books, articles, blog posts, podcasts and videos) and ultimately decide to use first-person point of view for my novel. I will no doubt receive lots of differing information about which POV technique to use and I’ll see examples. Finally, I will make a decision and try it out.

Here’s the question: did I come to this POV decision independently? And if I did not truly come to this decision independently, then, even though I did not have any in person conversations about POV, was my thinking influenced by other people?

The answer is undoubtedly yes, because all of the information that I absorbed about the POV topic was created by other people. So, at a minimum, my thinking on this topic was socially influenced: the thoughts and actions of other people provided fodder for my own thinking. Social is other people and in this example I absorbed someone else’s information and was probably influenced by it in some way.

So this could lead to another discussion which I’m not quite prepared to undertake at this point: is independent thought remotely possible today, given the endless barrages of information that we are subjected to each day. At some point, something’s got to stick in our brains and form the basis for further thought. And yes, people can certainly make decisions: we make dozens if not hundreds of decisions every day and includes decisions about we choose to believe.

I am grudgingly starting to agree with Jacobs and Kleon are correct but I don’t think it’s an ironclad rule. It doesn’t take an in-person presence and a verbal discussion to influence a person’s thinking. The true exceptions to this idea are few and far between and they are based on the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom over a lifetime.

Have I made you doubt your ability to think independently? Or am I missing some either subtle or obvious reason why a person should be able to think independently of other people, if social influences extend beyond physical presence?

Happy Wednesday!