After a long while, I am reading a book and writing down what it says.
Through the book club, I came to know the classic 'The Stranger' and, while reading a similar recommended book '(La) Nausée' (Nausea)… With these two books of similar tone, the first went smoothly, but the second kept circling in the same place and could not move on to the next page.
A few weeks passed when, by chance, I found a few books at the COEX International Book Fair. Thin books—their weight and even their publisher's name were as light as their thickness—but the titles and contents were enough to shake me.
The reason was this: during the last meeting, where I was presenting, the excessive(?) sensitivity to contemplation of the author of 'Ten Thousand Behaviors' felt very similar to my own, and through the books 'The Stranger' and 'Nausea' that I read afterward, the weight of what I call 'thinking' within me had been growing stronger by the day.
This book takes a comprehensive approach to why humanity came to think, and then addresses why individuals fall into thought. It also contains themes very similar to my own experiences in organizations and relationships, which is why I found it so helpful. It is not a translation but the work of a Korean author, which made the difficult content easier to follow, and its careful additional notes on referenced books were also very helpful.
While reading this book, I used two colors of Post-its. One for passages that moved me personally, the other for passages I can apply or connect to the artificial intelligence technology in the patent / R&D I am preparing personally.
I want to copy out the parts that were personally memorable.
Thinking, the Noise of Consciousness, Kim Jong-gap (Micro-Humanities 2014)
(p.22)
A Poison Tree — William Blake
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
(p.33)
As electricity flows along a wire, thought moves along chains of association.
A thought steeped in green poison touches the roots of poisonous images and poisonous memories, and drags up, like potatoes on a string, a long trail of harmful images.
The person might think they are 'sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall' in order not to forget past humiliations and revenge, and might justify that very thinking. But that thinking is self-excuse for an inability to take revenge. Their thinking is deaf and blind, thinking for thinking's sake, the vicious circle of thinking, the self-replication of thinking. They become the slave, not the master, of their thinking. And like a branch snapping under the weight of snow, unable to bear the weight of thought, they collapse flat on their back under the apple tree.
(p.38)
They already know too well that once inside the fence of thought, there is no way out. They know the truth that we do not live to solve the koan, but that it is fine to forget the koan in order to live. Why think about thirst? Isn't it enough just to drink water?
(p.62)
That day I walked home on foot. For two whole hours these thoughts rolled inside my head.
This simple incident contains all the main elements of the world-as-theater that I spoke of. First, I was trying to console the insult and wound I had suffered in reality with the thought of them. I was trying to compensate for my helplessness in reality with the capacity of thought. Second, at a meeting where I could not see what lay one step ahead and where, naturally, things could not go my way, I was thinking of myself as a director who knew and controlled everything, like an omnipotent god. At the time, I did not want to attend the meeting because I was immersed in other work. And because I had not yet fully come out of that immersion, I could not wittily respond to a colleague's attack. Even so, I was thinking that I should have had quick wit. Third, I was assuming that everything, including the meeting, existed for my happiness and joy. In a meeting with sensitive interests tangled, insulting remarks can fly, voices can rise, and one can even grab another's collar. Meetings are not held to make me feel good, nor do my fellow professors exist so that I will not be insulted. And yet I cannot escape the self-centered thought that it should be so. Fourth, in that meeting the words 'what does Dr. Kim know?' did not draw attention. No one paid any mind to them. It was not an important plot point, merely a trivial incident. And yet I am thinking that anything related to me is important.
(p.74)
Mind or thought is a byproduct of survival developed by humanity in order to adapt to changes in its environment. The brain is merely 'a machine assembled not to understand itself but to survive' (Edward Wilson, Consilience, p.184). What in the beginning sufficed as blind survival instinct later becomes desire and consciousness, will and contemplation, taking on consciousness and becoming meta. If I am hungry, it is desire that becomes conscious of that fact. If mating is instinct, wanting to mate under better conditions is desire; following or refusing that desire is will; and the consciousness of the action of desire and will is thought.
(p.76)
We do not live to pursue truth; we think in order to live, and to live beautifully and meaningfully. As in the chimpanzee example, the most important function of thought is its representational capacity. Instead of keep stretching out a hand that cannot reach the ant in the hole, you make yourself and the situation an object of consciousness. Thought is the ability to step back from the given situation and look at it from a distance. Even at this stage, thought becomes inseparable from survival. Instead of securing food with the tool of thought, you become able to ask 'what is thought?' And as this autonomy deepens, thought, like art for art's sake, breaks free from its survival function and becomes thought for thought's sake. "The history of evolution is a succession of byproducts of mutations that are at first selected for some function, and gradually develop so that eventually they are selected to perform another function" (Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday, p.491).
(p.113)
To know is not to perceive. Thinking, of course, is also not perceiving. Like the moment you hear music and think 'a Beethoven sonata,' or, seeing a woman you meet for the first time, you recall your first love: the perceptual experience that should be concrete can be replaced with knowledge of that kind of music, and the present space where the music plays can be filled with memories and feelings of the past. If in 'I perceive' perception is aimed at the pure present, in 'I think' thought tends to aim not at the here and now but at abstraction, past, or future. Even the music you are listening to now, once made an object of thought, takes on the past-tense form of 'the music I listened to.' By thinking, we miss the present.
—omitted—
We have a tendency to replace what should be perceived with thought. We listen to the 'Moonlight Sonata' with thought and see trees and roses with thought. The concepts 'tree' and 'rose' are not things that can be seen and touched but abstract nouns. Someone who has never seen a rose or a chrysanthemum can search the internet and, in an instant, learn the difference between a rose and a chrysanthemum and produce a dictionary definition. That person might be able to say more about roses than someone who grows roses in their own garden.
Knowledge without perception is possible.
