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LM: #329: Snap-to-grid thinking
If you’ve ever used Photoshop without knowing “Snap to grid” was on, you know it’s a frustrating feeling. You try to paint in a certain spot, then inexplicably your cursor jumps to another.
This is what it’s like talking to many people.
It’s normal that, due to flaws in communication or interpretation, what you mean to say is not always what people understand, but snap-to-grid thinkers have a limited number of points to which they will jump in any conversation topic. It’s usually the 1–3 hot-button items that are regularly being harped on by the media.
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The topics which they can talk about are limited, and they can only say about each things they already heard from someone else.
To be fair, we’re all a little snap-to-grid. Our thoughts are mostly products of what information we’ve been exposed to, and the subjects we can even consider are but meatballs and noodles suspended in the soup of media and social influence that surrounds us.
Additionally, the thoughts of others are hand- and foot-holds on scaffolding we can climb to reach new heights. You don’t have to build a personal moral framework from scratch when you can start with, say, John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism.
But the more different places you get information, the closer you study that information – so that you don’t merely accept what’s fed to you but instead consider what you agree and don’t agree with – and the more you think and write to yourself, ostensibly free of outside influence, the higher fidelity grid your thoughts navigate. If most people are at 1,000 pixels, you can make it to 100, 10, or 5.
If you’re really diligent, you can sometimes break free of the grid altogether, and start painting at the pixel level.
Aphorism: “Do not think of knocking out another person’s brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.” –Horace Mann
Book: Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business is heavyweight boxer Ed Latimore’s guide to prevailing through life’s inevitable blows.
Best,
David
P.S. How to have a thought.
