The philosophical plane

One of the feelings I love most is when my brain clicks into 6th gear. I may be going along at a respectable 3rd or 4th, maybe contemplating a run to 5th if I'm feeling ambitious; sometimes I'm just in neutral when it happens. But suddenly I start thinking like crazy. It's like my brain is full of different colours, a weird surreal landscape where thoughts that belong in no sane thought-pattern maraud around and get taken seriously. It's a nice buzz, really.

This different plane of brainwaves normally has a little overlap with the normal dimensions of thought in which I had been existing previously. For example, just now I was thinking about the inspiration stuff from my last few posts, and also about another little thesis I'm planning to add to these records soon, when suddenly I thought: if we could harness philosophical or academic thoughts and employ them in real life, how would we live?

Or rather, I had an instantaneous explosion of synapses and so on that cannot be expressed in a satisfying way through words, such is the complexity and bizarreness (bizarrity?) of the phenomenon. Often, stretches in 6th gear can be partly translated into normal-sounding ideas, such as the one I just had (this particular idea will be the subject of the next entry), but most of the time they are extinguished at their demise, like a dream you thought was really good/interesting but cannot remember for the life of you.

My life exists in two spheres. The normal one, where everyone exists, and the one where I have really crazy thoughts, sometimes about god and the significance of existence, sometimes about pure thought itself, sometimes about cups of tea, but always in a new plane of brain activity, the philosophical plane, 6th gear. Where I....philosophise. And I'm fairly confident that everyone exists in this plane too, not that I can test this theory.

Philosophy itself is an interesting concept. People tend to think of it as 'thinking about things' or trying to work out the answer to life's great questions. I used to be under philosophy's spell; I used to be adamant in my belief the most important thing in the world is that everyone has a good think now and again - and I still think this has a lot of truth to it. Philosophy use to be my god, I used to aspire to be someone who could think really well. But now in my old age (hur hur) I tend to see more of the pretentious and pointless side of things. Lots of philosophers are particularly arrogant folk, and their ideas seldom achieve anything or even have much interest. Nowdays I tend to think that you should think about stuff that interests and impacts you without giving it silly names. It's not exactly a change for the cynical - by any standards my beliefs are still very idealistic and don't look like changing in a hurry. But I do think that a lot of people need to realise that - while thinking for its own sake is more than justified - they shouldn't feel a requirement to be artificially deep. Life isn't particularly deep. But deep thoughts are great fun when they do come along.

So, I have my two spheres of life, as do (I believe) all people save the most crass (those who never think hard) and the most pretentious (those who always think too hard). When I have a good think, I will often find myself exploring ideas that have no bearing on reality, and this is all well and good. But when I'm living my life, I return to the all-familiar world of, to be honest, equal silliness - all the things you do and then regret, all the falseness and airs, all the glorious little sparklings of emotion. And while I do believe that it is important, if you are given to bouts of grandiose thinking, to be able to return to normality for most of the time (after all, this is where a huge number of the great experiences lie), I also cannot but feel a tinge of sadness at the thought that none of our great thoughts from the philosophical plane can be put to use in changing the normal plane for the better.

Or can they? That question was the subject of my last Big Thought, and of the next post.