The Way I Think

/writing/think

Introduction: Why I Am Writing

Miyamoto Musashi, 1584-1645, was the greatest swordman in Japanese history, perhaps in world history. A few weeks before his death, he left behind a book to one of his pupils, entitled, A Book of Five Rings. That book is now the canonical work on martial arts strategy.

Musashi writes in a way that is cryptic and deliberately designed to be obscure; the book is not a work for everyone. A Book of Five Rings is, however, a very deep book; it goes beyond details of technique to describing the warrior's do, something of sufficient profundity and applicability to be of far broader use than just martial arts. The book is used by many businessmen who have no direct interest in martial arts.

The Japanese word do, from the Chinese word Tao, is traditionally rendered as 'way' or 'Way'. A case could also be made for translating it as 'profession', 'religion', 'culture', 'art', 'manner of living', or 'logos' (as in bio-logy, theo-logy, geo-logy -- these words mean the logia of life, God, and stones, respectively). It is one of those deep, rich words which is not too readily translated, but can be understood.

As I was reading from the Five Rings recently, I began to think of writing a response to Musashi. What kind of response? I was first thinking of something like a rebuttal, but that upon further reflection seemed inadequate. Then I came to a more nuanced understanding of what kind of response would be appropriate. Musashi describes a particular flavor of the warrior's Way. The response I thought of was to describe the way I walk, the way I think, the way I learn. (Don't worry if you haven't read Musashi -- this document is sufficiently different that one could read it without realizing that its initial conception was as a response to Musashi.)

This book is intended for two audiences. One is for young people adults reading for themselves; the other is for parents reading for input in the formation, education, and guidance of their children. I hope that both may profit from it.

I have some hesitancies in writing this. In some sense, writing a book like this could be construed as a claim to be a giant equal to Musashi. I don't want that. Another doubt may be expressed by saying that I have not in an obvious sense fashioned or followed a distinctive Way (comparable to what Musashi did) that would justify writing a book. Someone with a mind to do so could probably think of other, more pungent reasons why this book should not be written or read. With all of these doubts taken into account, I remembered thinking at a previous time that I wished some people whom I intellectually respect would leave behind a book on how they think -- but most of them didn't.

Theophane the Monk, in Tales of a Magic Monastery, tells the following story (partly paraphrased):

The Well

Up there everyone gets what he asks for. I came there a wounded man, sorely hurt by my brothers. So I said, "Solitude!"

Wonderful, for a time. But then I began to think about the life and example of Christ. Was it really right, I wondered, to spend so much time by myself? So I shouted, "Community!"

Wonderful again. I asked for this thing and that, and at one point I got so distressed that I said, "Death!"

Aah, what a relief. No more striving, no more pain. But then I began to want life again -- if you're alive, you can at least move around. If you're dead, you're just -- dead.

But I couldn't go up to the Well, and no one would go up for me. They just passed me by. How could they be so thoughtless? How could they be so cruel?

Finally, someone said it. "Life for my brother!" he said into the Well. And I was alive, gloriously alive.

I wanted to meet him, to thank him. So I went around and asked, "Did you see the one who called into the Well and gave me life?" The replies came: "Nobody does that!" "You call down into the well for yourself, not for someone else. I went searching, searching, long and hard before it occurred to me that someone else might want to be brought back to life. So I ran back to the well, and shouted, "Life for my brothers and my sisters!"

There, reflected in the waters at the base of the well, I saw the face of the one who had called me back from the dead.

Preface: Intelligence and Audience

This writing represents in one sense a departure from most of what I write. Most of what I write is intended for a general audience; parts might be better understood by someone who's bright and knows a lot, but it is written in the hope that almost anyone who would want to read it would learn at least something from it. This writing is not. It is intended for a small minority of readers with special needs, and (after having set down the project) I am picking it up again with one specific person in mind, a person whom I am mentoring. Anyone is welcome to read it -- I am not trying to write a Nag Hammandi library of Gnostic apocrypha, and any reader is welcome to take whatever of value he may learn from such a writing -- but this is written for a group of people who think and learn very, very differently from the mainstream.

The specific minority I am writing for -- and many of you may not know who you are; if you're in this minority, you've probably gotten mediocre or lower grades, possibly had people comment on how stupid you are, and almost certainly have dealt with labels such as 'odd' and 'underachiever' -- are the astronomically intelligent. As I write, I am probably causing a degree of culture shock, in that your intelligence is in American culture treated like a social disease, in that it's not one of the things you talk about in polite company. Why am I writing about this, if smart people are better than average at figuring things out and the smartest should least of all need a book to congratulate them on how smart they are? Well, the perspective embodied in that question embodies a few problems, and a proper answer to that question would fill a book. (An excellent one has been written, incidentally, entitled Guiding the Gifted Child, by James T. Webb, Elizabeth A. Meckstroth, and Stephanie S. Tolen. The book is a lot broader than its title might suggest, and it is well worth reading by any gifted adult who does not have a thorough grounding in the issues surrounding giftedness.) I would like to offer a brief synopsis of an answer. To wit:

First, there has been posited a range of optimum intelligence -- IQ scores (which I would take as a quick and dirty approximation, a rough gauge of intelligence that's usually right -- most definitely not an absolute and perfect evaluation of every aspect of human intelligence) in the range of 125-145 between which people are smart and function well in society. Beyond that, there come certain difficulties in adaptation -- roughly, the same sort of problems which would be faced by a person of average intelligence growing up in a world of people where most individuals had an IQ in the range of 55-60. There are frustrations which come when, for example, the adults who you look up to seem incapable of perceiving what appears obvious to you. Furthermore, the higher IQ scores go, the more a person ceases to have simply more of the intelligence most people possess, and instead has a different kind of intelligence than most people possess. For example, speaking within America, you might say that a person of IQ 100 possesses a reasonable command of the English language, a person of IQ 130 possesses a very good command of the English language, and a person of IQ 160 possesses a stellar command of French alongside a halting command of the English language. Can you see how this would cause problems? People with an IQ of 170+ tend to feel that they don't fit in anywhere. (I might only half-jokingly suggest that Michael Valentine Smith in Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, given his apparent IQ range, would almost as much have been a stranger in a strange land had he been raised on Earth instead of Mars.) (Second note: One of the signs that suggests a child might be rather bright is an unusual sense of humor. Guiding the Gifted Child opened, very appropriately in my estimation, by telling of a nine year old girl who was asked, "What is the difference between a fish and a submarine?" and thought a moment before answering, "A submarine has lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise, while a fish only has tartar sauce.") Exceptional intelligence brings with it significant difficulties in adaptation, and on that score I would commend the absolutely brilliant portrayal of an astronomically intelligent six year old boy in Madeleine l'Engle's A Wind in the Door.

This book is written to a special needs population with a legitimate distinguishing feature -- and it is written to provide something that those special needs people won't get in a world that is geared without particularly much consideration for their needs.

In talking about the difficulties faced by brilliant minds in education, one person made an analogy with a track that has markings on it for where to put your feet in order to run. This structure is useful and beneficial for the vast majority of students, who can barely walk, and need great assistance in the difficult task of running. Suppose, though, that a natural athlete comes along with running in his bones. If he is just placed on a track and allowed to run, he will do so. If, however, he is made to slow down and put his feet exactly along the markings, it will severely disrupt his rhythm. He will trip, he will fall down, and people who are watching him will think he has no talent whatsoever. This is why, for instance, Einstein failed at math and was told by his teacher that he would never be any good at it.

This is a book written about the way I have discovered to run, written in the hope that someone will read it and learn to fly.

Chapter 1: Basic Talent

The basic talent is a given that other things I am suggesting may work with. Or in other words, there are some things I offer suggestions for; there are others I cannot change in others or in myself.

Chapter 2: Christianity

Here I would like to begin properly an explanation of the way I think. As with many things, I have hesitancies; in this case, I fear making Christianity a mere means to the end of thinking well, and telling people, "You might want to become a Christian in order to think better." That would be a bit like making friends with a rich person so he will give you some of his money; there is something perverse, and one might ask whether someone who becomes a friend in order to obtain money is really a friend at all.

That stated, I wish to go ahead, and say that Christianity is the fertile soil in which my way of thinking grows. I am not enough of a historian to fully trace how and why; others (i.e. Whitehead) have argued strongly that Western science exists only because of medieval Christianity and in particular a belief in a rational God who would make a rationally comprehensible universe. My work and endeavor can no more be understood in the absence of consideration that I am a Christian than can that of Thomas Aquinas or any lesser figure whose name does not come to my mind.

In the course of reading the Bible cover to cover somewhere over half a dozen times (I've lost count exactly, and there are many passages I've read more than that), I have come to encounter a rich preparation that was in itself as rich as a liberal arts education -- or, now that I think about it, significantly better, because a brilliant student will not be bumping his head on the ceiling with the Bible the same way he will at almost any liberal arts school. I don't mean to downplay liberal arts education, in which I am a firm believer, but being a Christian -- one who accepts God's grace, takes Christian faith seriously, and endeavors to love God with all of his mind -- is the base without which I could not have come to any of the rest of this.

The popular stereotype of Christianity is, in Jesse Ventura's words, a sham and a crutch for the weak minded. It certainly can be that, or anything else one cares to cut it down to (justification for slavery, apartheid, and other institutionalized sin comes readily to mind), but it can also be infinitely more. Christian thought has a power and clarity to it that I have never seen elsewhere (though Hinduism would be a decent competitor; G.K. Chesterton commented that, if you're going to look at world religions, you will save yourself a great deal of time if you only consider Christianity and Hinduism). I certainly haven't found such clarity and lucidity in contemporary Western philosophy. I know that that many who try to be free thinkers find nuanced thought in postmodernism and backwards parochialism in traditional Christianity, but the more I've considered it, the more I think that is suspect.

Chapter 3: Mathematics

If the study of mathematics provides the preparation of how to think, the study of theology and philosophy provides the conceptual basis for what to think with. Enlightenment nonsense notwithstanding, I do separate the two disciplines, but treat them as loci on a continuum that can never be separated. Theological claims have philosophical implications, and philosophical claims have theological implications. (Psychology might helpfully be added, but I will not treat it here). Theology and philosophy are two ends of a stick -- if you pick up one, you pick up the other. Trying to do (especially) philosophy without regard to theological implications is a recipe for disaster, like swinging around a baseball bat and watching where the handle goes but not the end.

There is a reason why the highest level of education in most disciplines bears the title of philosophia doctor. The medieval conception of philosophy included all of our academic disciplines; if a person can broadly pursue philo-sophia, the love of wisdom under the somewhat freer definitions it enjoyed in the past, he will be in a good position.

Chapter 4: Theology and Philosophy

If the study of mathematics provides the preparation of how to think, the study of theology and philosophy provides the conceptual basis for what to think with. Enlightenment nonsense notwithstanding, I do separate the two disciplines, but treat them as loci on a continuum that can never be separated. Theological claims have philosophical implications, and philosophical claims have theological implications. (Psychology might helpfully be added, but I will not treat it here). Theology and philosophy are two ends of a stick -- if you pick up one, you pick up the other. Trying to do (especially) philosophy without regard to theological implications is a recipe for disaster, like swinging around a baseball bat and watching where the handle goes but not the end.

There is a reason why the highest level of education in most disciplines bears the title of philosophia doctor. The medieval conception of philosophy included all of our academic disciplines; if a person can broadly pursue philo-sophia, the love of wisdom under the somewhat freer definitions it enjoyed in the past, he will be in a good position.

Chapter 5: Intuition

Our present educational system does at least a crude job of teaching logical reasoning skills, but doesn't even mention intuition unless you get off the beaten path. Most people seem to like to either classify logic as solid and intuition as belonging in the same place as pseudo-science (Intuition, n. An uncanny sense that you're right, whether or not you actually are), or talk about how logic is this slow, plodding process and intuition has wings. I would prefer to say that the two faculties are good partners who complement each other and work well in tandem.

How do you gain intuitive acuity? Fortunately, it's easier than honing your logical abilities. You pay attention to your gut feeling, and do what it says unless you have good reason not to; over time, your intuition will become trustworthy. I know it seems like something more complex is in order, but that's it.

Chapter 6: You Must Study the Ways of All Professions

Miyamoto Musashi wrote in A Book of Five Rings, "You must study the ways of all professions." That sentence alone is worth buying and reading the book. It is exactly what Musashi did; at points, he compares swordplay to building a house, and he left behind a variety of artistic creations.

I am a firm believer in a liberal arts education, and something broader even, working as a camp counselor or even working as a salesman at Wal-Mart. Being an eclectic is very good; reading an incredibly diverse collection is good, and reading books like those in my annotated bibliography is a good start. A great breadth of background gives flexibility to the mind, and speed in adapting to new situations. The Army once did a study of who makes the best minesweepers, and they found that the best candidate is an intelligent soldier with a lot of hobbies who moves slowly. Even if the hobbies were nothing like minesweeping, they gave a flexibility of mind that functioned well in a new context.

A diversity of experiences complements focused mathematics in helping you learn how to think.

Chapter 7: High Commitment/Low Commitment, White Box/Black Box, Outside the Box/Inside the Box

In martial arts, there is a distinction made between high and low commitment styles. A high commitment art puts your full oomph into an action; a low commitment art holds back, and tries to keep options open. High commitment favors decisiveness; low commitment favors freedom. A high commitment blow does more damage, but a low commitment martial artist can more easily recover from a mistake. This distinction has application far beyond martial arts.

In software engineering, white box testing is testing that lets you see what's going on inside a program, while black box testing is testing that doesn't see what's inside -- just what a program is given as input, and what it does as output. (The box is dark inside; you can't see anything.) From this distinction comes thinking about an object in terms of what it is, and what it does. The TV show MacGyver showed a character who knew how to look about what an object is; when he needed to do some climbing, he looked at a garden hose and a rake and did not just see "Means of transporting water" and "means of loosening surface of ground;" he saw, "flexible, hollow tube" and "short wooden pole with pronged iron attachment", and unscrewed the head of the rake, screwed it onto the end of the hose, and used it as a rope and grappling hook.

I think most readers should be familiar with the concept of thinking outside the box, which is as of my present writing a cliche and a fad, so I will not repeat the chorus of "think outside the box." What I will say is that most brilliant minds need to learn to think inside the box. In chess, which I am learning, there are a number of ways in which I naturally think outside the box. I ask what it would be like if I could move my queen like a knight as well, or if I could take two moves. This kind of thinking could perhaps be incorporated into a really cool metagame, perhaps at best a Mao of board games, but it is not helping me to play chess. To learn to play chess, I need to think inside the box, and only make legal moves that appear to move me closer to checkmating my opponent.

Which of these do I favor? In all three cases, I favor and encourage a proficiency in both ways of thinking, and a fluidity in moving between them as is appropriate to the context. I also favor metacognition: evaluating and changing the way one thinks. But I'll leave that for a different chapter.

Chapter 8: Experience and Inexperience, Youth and Age

Experience is venerated in our society, if not the age by which one acquires it; I would like to suggest that inexperience has definite and overlooked merits as well. Nearly all major scientific discoveries were made by inexperienced scientists -- that is to say, people who were learning their disciplines and had not yet assimilated its blind spots. In gaining experience, one learns to see certain things, but also not to see certain things; one involuntarily shuts out a great many bad things, and a few greatly good things. Zen talks about having a beginner's mind.

There are cognitive differences between children and adults, and between a young adult and an older one. Average children are far more creative than talented adult engineers; children are novices par excellence. They haven't learned an adult way of seeing things.

As per the attitude of the previous chapter, I do not advocate functioning in one of these modes, although I have spelled out the virtue of inexperience and the problem of experience as these are less well-known than their counterparts. What I do advocate is a fluidity in moving between them -- and in the last case, not just between child and adult, but in the range between child and senior. The present grandmaster of ninjutsu wrote that life begins at 70; although this book is primarily written for young people (primarily because they are at a point of being able to choose how a greater portion of their lives will go, and are less set in their ways), there is a great deal to be said for seniority. There is real truth in the image of the old, wise man.

Chapter 9: Cultures and Different Temporal Ages

I don't experience culture shock in the usual sense. When I began crossing cultures, I braced myself against culture shock, and was underwhelmed. I didn't find the other cultures to be any goofier than my own. Depending on how you look at it, I either never experience culture shock, or always experience culture shock.

I strive to be in this world but not of it in a religious sense; there is also a secular sense in which I am in this world but not of it. I don't perfectly fit in any of the cultures I've encountered.

C.S. Lewis said, "The traveller has lived in many villages, and is therefore rendered to some extent immune to the errors of his own local village. The scholar has lived in many times, and is therefore rendered partially immune to the great spout of nonsense that flows from his and every age." As per Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind, each culture is a cave as in Plato's allegory; he says that moving to another cave does not allow one to see the sun, but I would suggest that having a variety of differing mistranslations of a particular text will permit one to tentatively understand the original better than if one only has one mistranslation. Therefore I reccommend exposing yourself to different cultures and ages. Travel and live abroad, if you can. Read works such as medieval romances and the Tao Te Ching.

I would like to issue a note about multi-culturalism. What I am advocating here is worthy, in my eyes, of the title of 'multi-culturalism'. Most of what goes under that rubbish is not. Current multi-culturalism gives much too brief of a contact with a culture to learn anything worth learning; it's kind of like Monty Python's competition to see who can provide the best 15-second explanation of the works of Proust. It is more informative to say, "This doesn't work," which is exactly what was done by announcing an award to "the girl with the biggest tits." I am much happier to have lived for 2 1/2 months in Malaysia and 4 months in France, than I would have been to have spent one day in each country of the world. Furthermore, the cultures are unnecessarily distorted to serve as mouthpieces to the orthodoxy of the left; hence Travels with Rigoberta as described in Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education. It is something like trying to illuminate a forest at night by shining light on it with a slide projector with a slide of a car, so that people are led to the conclusion that if you really look at the forest, what you will see is a car.

As a part of education, I would encourage the reader to move about in cultures and ages. I myself live partly in the Middle Ages, partly in the Early Christian Era, partly in academia, partly at IMSA, partly in Malaysia, partly in France, partly in contemporary America, partly in the Renaissance...

Chapter 10: Mysticism and Pragmatism, Kairos and Chronos

Every culture is goofy; the American form of goofiness is in large part associated with pragmatism/utilitarianism, a philosophy that says that everything should be made useful and pragmatic, interpreted to mean contributing to material wealth, getting things done, etc. I don't want to mount a full attack on it here (although a good starting point is found in Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and Franky Schaeffer's Addicted to Mediocrity: 20th Century Christians and the Arts; both of them show in different areas the real cost of pragmatism), but I wish to say two things:

1: It transposes the role of means and ends, making culture justified to the extent that it produces wealth. This is highly distorted; it is closer to the mark to say that wealth is justified to the extent that it supports culture, and it embodies the same error I took pains to avoid making in the beginning of this book, when I refused to say "Christianity has helped me to think well; you should become a Christian too so that it will also help your thought."

2: Pragmatism isn't very pragmatic. Lao Tze in the Tao Te Ching said, "All men know the utility of useful things; few men know the utility of useless things." A great many of the most useful things appear useless on the surface; it takes patience and an ability to delay reward to accomplish anything of real merit. It is of great pragmatic merit to invest time in a diversity of interests, none of which have any obviously useful application.

As well as moving away from pragmatism, I would equally urge a move away from chronos into kairos. Chronos is time that is externally controlled, that can be measured by a ticking clock; kairos is measured by moments if it is measured at all, and is internally controlled, such as time that is spent just hanging out with your friends when you lose track of time. Deep thinking is time in kairos rather than time in chronos; it is measured by whether you have come to a resolution of an idea, not by how many minutes have elapsed. Hurry, and cramming as many activities as possible into time, are a distinctively American disease, and are something I would encourage anyone (not just the bright) to step out of. Move to a slower tempo, or no measured tempo. Life is too short to live in a hurry.

Chapter 11: Metacognition

Metacognition is thinking about thinking. It is incredibly valuable to think about how you think; the contents of this book are drawn from metacognition. It is, socially, valuable to pay attention to metamessages, and respond not only to what another person says but why he says it; a great many stories in the Gospel show Jesus circumventing a direct reply to a question posed and instead responding to the reason why a person would pose such a question.

That's all of worth I can think to say of metacognition, but do not judge its importance by the tiny size of this chapter.

Chapter 12: Emotional Intelligence and Social Skills

One of my friends at Wheaton talked about how his girlfriend spoke English nearly perfectly -- he could only remember hearing her make mistakes of any kind twice; she didn't even make the mistakes usually made by most speakers. What made this particularly remarkable was that English was not her first language, or even her second. It was something like her third or fourth.

Her proficiency in English serves as a useful analogy for what social skills can be among the extraordinarily intelligent. The bad news is that social skills aren't a first language to many of the brightest minds. (There is a lot of truth to the stereotype of the maladapted genius.) The good news is that they have the talent to attain a high degree of proficiency in a third or fourth language.

The program I would set forth is as follows, in the order that they occurred to me (not order of logical priority, which is not clear to me):

1: So far as you can, pursue emotionally healthy friendships with others where you have a lot in common. One or two good friendships is worth a lot. 'Emotionally healthy' takes precedence to 'your own intellectual level', but they are both important. If you have one or two people with whom you can share whatever interests you without worry about it sailing over their heads, you have in diminutive form the context in which most people naturally develop social skills without ever consciously thinking, "I need to develop social skills." This may be hard, but if you can do it, it's a wonderful benefit.

2: Read books that talk about emotional intelligence and social skills; several titles are listed in the bibliography.

3: Apply what you have read in dealing with people in general. As with a great many other things outlined in here, practice, practice, practice! Practice is a key to success in many things. You might seriously consider, for a time, working in a socially oriented profession: camp counselor, engineer, help desk, manager, and sales associate are a few that come to mind. Not all of them will be delightful -- help desk is also known as Hell desk -- but they will all contribute to your education. Michael Valentine Smith, in Stranger in a Strange Land, had a rather eccentric education, and the kinds of things that educated him might educate you a lot more than Harvard.

I will not try to say much about emotional intelligence specifically, because of the quality of existing writings on that topic. They have flaws (Daniel Goleman seems to want to replace the "intelligence is everything" myth, which simply isn't true, with an "emotional intelligence is everything" myth, which is equally untrue), but if read attentively and critically, they provide a deep insight into a companion area of inquiry to the contents of the present book.

Chapter 13: Style of Learning

Some readers may have noticed that I've said to do a lot of thinks, without saying how one would go about doing much of any of them. That gap is intentional, as part of presentation; the primary audience will fill in those gaps, and would only be slowed down by an attempt to specify in detail how to think about how you think. Where most people learn slowly, from the bottom up, the sharpest minds learn quickly, from the top down. Instead of a gradual accumulation of details, from which the broader picture slowly emerges, they grasp the broader picture in flashes of insight, from which the details are filled in.

When I was in Brigade as a little boy, I couldn't memorize Bible verses at all. The people used the King James Version, which had only the haziest connection to any language I had been exposed to, and the Bible verses were to me meaningless sentences, and so I would be stumbling with the first words after the rest of the class had memorized it. Since that point, and since I've come to understand what I have been reading, people are amazed at what I can recall and even quote from diverse texts, and I once memorized an entire book without trying to. This difference in learning mechanism is also part of why I failed the Kuk Sool yellow belt test (which I haven't heard of anyone else doing), and barely passed the karate orange belt test (the instructors told me to wait another session before testing again). It's not that I couldn't learn -- as a white belt, I beat two out of three black belt instructors at sparring -- but just that my learning took a different pattern from what the martial arts training was designed around. I learn major concepts first, and then details.

Being cognizant of this difference, and trying to do what you can do instead of what you can't do, will make a tremendous difference in learning. It may also explain why, if you're so bright, you don't do so well in contexts that less bright people thrive in.

Chapter 14: An Academic Discipline?

Michael Valentine Smith started a new religion. (Or at least that's what someone who didn't understand Stranger at all would say; I'm not going to attempt here to describe what he did start.) As a Christian, I do not choose to pursue that direction, but the siren song of starting some kind of movement does have allure to me. Before dismissing the possibility of starting a specific kind of movement, I would like to explain why it is a siren song that allures me: the pull is much stronger to me than that of grandiose desire to be a messiah. While I can have brief moments of wanting to be some sort of superhero, I really only want at heart to look back at the end of my life and see a life of faith, productive work accomplished, some cool writings to bequeath to the world, and a handful of mentorships where I would have strong, positive, and formative influence in a few people's lives.

Why, then, do I see an attraction in being some sort of movement's leader, and what sort of movement might I be tempted to start? Well, I'll answer the second question first. I would like to start an academic discipline, and the content of the discipline I would like to start would be how to think. The discipline of sociology came to be because a brilliant philosopher decided he wanted to start an academic discipline, and spotted one of a number of decent-sized gaps in the subject matter covered by academia, namely how human relationships work. How to think is at least as large a gap in an enterprise of thinkers; there are a few disciplines which one must learn to think well to succeed in, such as mathematics and philosophy, but there is nothing that studies exactly how to think effectively. Cognitive science comes close (in a different way from mathematics) by studying how humans think in order to try to see if we can make thinking machines, but there is no discipline which directly tells you how to use your mind. A discipline of how to think would make an excellent combination in a double major with some other discipline.

Excluding the various problems that would be associated with being a leader of a movement per se (such as being insanely busy, and having to shut people out (I find it sickening to think that if I tried to start such a movement and succeeded, I would be put in the position of having to turn away emotionally vulnerable kids who look up to me and want my time and attention -- no matter how diplomatic you are about it, that's still a crushing blow that often turns bright hopes into disillusionment)), there are problems I see with generating such an academic discipline. One aspect is that starting such an enterprise would act as a magnet to feminism, Marxism, and other heresies, and risk turning into the two cultures scientist's stereotype of a bad humanities discipline. Given what some departments could be and what they in fact are, I am more optimistic about what such an enterprise could become than what it would become. The second significant problem I see is that the content of such a discipline would vary considerably depending on the intelligence level of the subjects; while there are schools where this might be done (and one school, which shall remain nameless given the fact that I didn't note its name, decided that it would be a good idea to combine the departments of geology and geography into one department), it does not make logical sense. The third problem is that the people whom I am most concerned about are such a tiny minority that there's not enough of them to really justify a department, and will by nature be so scattered that one could not easily gather them at one school. For reasons like these, I want to do something a little quieter with my life than attempting to start an academic discipline.

Well, that's the bad news. What's the good news?

The good news is that I don't think a full-fledged academic discipline is necessary. The people I am most concerned for, who do not have their thinking needs adequately addressed by our educational system, have minds like sponges, and can pick up this material quite easily without the apparatus of academia. What cannot really be provided is not really needed. One book like this -- or, even better, several, written if other people pick up the thread started here and develop it -- is all that is really needed.

I mention the possibility of an academic discipline, even if it isn't one that I would want to pursue, to suggest that this is the kind of domain that is worthy of thought and consideration. I would like to see what others can think of.

Chapter Fifteen: Bibliography

The following are books which I would encourage for further reading.

Adams, James L., Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas

This is a book on whitebox thinking and how to think outside the box. As such, it may be as unnecessary as telling a fish how to swim, but it is still a good book, and worth mentioning.

The Bible

Number one in logical priority in this bibliography.

Number one in logical priority in this bibliography. My number two two recommendation is Insight.

Carnegie, Dale, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Social skills 101. The title to this book sounds positively Machiavellian, but the approach outlined is anything but manipulative. I greatly prefer to work with people who have read the book and are making some semblance of an attempt to work with its principles; the Golden Rule is not mentioned in the book (perhaps as being too obvious to comment on), but it's the sort of thing that's outlined in the book. People who like it might also like Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Feynman, Richard, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman

When I read this book, I was disappointed, because it appears naive and simpleminded. I realized on coming back that it was worth a second look.

l'Engle, Madeleine, A Wind in the Door

This book has a number of facets; one of them is a character, a little boy named Charles Wallace, whose IQ is "so high it's untestable by normal means." It provides deep literary insight into what it's like growing up very gifted, and it draws to the forefront an important question: How will Charles Wallace, who is getting beaten up every day at school, adapt.

Griffin, Em, A First Look at Communication Theory

For a theory-oriented mind, this provides the theoretical underpinnings to understanding how to work with those around you. It works well in tandem with other books.

Heinlein, Robert A., Stranger in a Strange Land

This classic science fiction novel has, as its basic premise, someone who is raised by Martians and brought to earth as a young man; the book has great merits and great flaws, and its main character is (alongside Charles Wallace) one of the characters in literature I have most identified with. It provides a significant view of how a brilliant mind might first just struggle to fit in, then learn about, then thrive in our culture.

Lonergan, Bernard, Insight

Insight fleshes out a good many things that I have only been in a position to hint at. It has occasional annoyances to the mathematician--trying to be sophisticated by quoting a misunderstanding of Göodel's Incompleteness Theorem, which after seeing similar misunderstandings in humanities work grates on a mathematician's nerves like fingers on a chalkboard--but this book makes a pretty serious and well-researched attempt at what I was trying to do.

Insight is my number two reccommendation, second only to the Bible.

Musashi, Miyamoto, A Book of Five Rings

The classic in response to which this book was written. It is subtle, cryptic, and deliberately written to be obscure, but it still holds a number of gems. It explains the Way of swordsmanship in Japanese culture.

Pollock, David C. The Third Culture Kid Experience: Growing Up Among Worlds

The Third Culture Kid (TCK), who in his growing-up years has been shaped by more than one culture, does not so much live in a culture in the sense of someone monocultural, as live in a meta-culture that examines others but does not fit in to any culture. The same is true of a really bright mind; the source of the distinctive feature is different (an intellectual instead of a cultural gap), but a definite resemblance is at play. Reading this book and then asking, "How does this apply to me?" should provide insights.

Polya, G., How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

This is a book about how one goes about solving a math problem -- something that is rarely explicitly transmitted -- and is applicable to far broader domains.

Spradley, James P., Participant Observation: Step by Step

This is a book of anthropology, about how to observe, understand, and describe a culture in an ethnography. There was another dimension in which it stimulated my thinking, but I am mentioning it here because the principles it provides to understand a cultural situation are useful tools for bright minds to use to understand a culture they don't fit in to. It might be retitled, How to understand and function in an alien culture.

Webb, James T.; Meckstroth, Elizabeth A.; Tolan, Stephanie S. Guiding the Gifted Child: A Practical Source for Parents and Teachers

This book is more than just what its title would suggest. When reading it, a number of things clicked into place that hadn't made sense before: an unusual sense of humor, feeling that I didn't fit in anywhere, the rate at which I learn... Parents who are reading my book to instruct a talented youngster would be well advised to read that as well. For all readers, it forms a good part of the backdrop to this writing.

Chapter Sixteen: Looking Back

I'm not sure that this piece was my best work, and not just because I tried (and perhaps failed) to treat something that is socially touchy: deal with a situation where people think of gifted people as people who have it easy, a sort of normal life with very enviable advantages, and talk about special needs. Perhaps authors are usually embarassed by their earlier work, but this one in particular strikes me as something that was interesting to explore but didn't produce a terribly interesting result. I am leaving it up because some people, for all I know, might find the hints helpful.

Since writing it, I have come to two realizations: the third of Bernard Lonergan's collected works, Insight, is probably of intense relevance here. I have given brief hints and nuggets of insight; he has seriously attempted a similar endeavor, but with much more explicit length and research. That work is what this work was meant to be, and if you're interested in this, buy it!

The second thought is that although I almost reinvented the topic myself, metacognition and how to think are things that are in the air today. Some people have become convinced; others have probably reinvented the same interest much as I have. There is much to be found if one asks these questions...

...but as I am growing in Orthodoxy, one of the things that I am coming to realize is a different way of looking at knowledge, and one where the fullest knowledge is something that grows as one walks the Orthodox Way, and not something that can be analyzed like something independent. A Glimpse into Eastern Orthodoxy talks about knowledge, if not specifically explaining the change of mind here. But earlier I was hoping to push this kind of thinking, knowledge, and ways of thought further. Now I believe there are deeper things to know, and I am shifting my efforts to learning them in the Orthodox Way.