The Benefits of Thinking Can't Be Overrated

Every so often I meet someone who tells me, "I don't watch TV. I don't even own a TV," and I think, "Hurray! Another member of the Thinking Club."

And then they add, "But I LOVE the new series from Netflix/Amazon/StreamOfUnconciousness. I watch it on my phone every week."

Oh. Okay, so it's not a TV per se, the big metal and glass box (it used to be called an Idiot Box) that monopolized a large corner of the living room, eclipsing other furniture, like bookshelves. Now, it's a big screen taking up a section of the wall, eclipsing other items, like artwork. Or it's the phone, streaming, when it isn't listening. Or a notebook (which, incidentally, used to be a pad of paper, upon which people wrote their thoughts, made lists, or drafted plans of something they were making).

Regardless of the screen of choice, the end result looks the same: digital matter, purportedly representing reality of some sort, that captures our time, glazed eyes, fractured attention, and spirit. While we're watching, we're not thinking, and if you don't believe me, try it some time. The next time the "news" is on, or a favorite show, see how actively you are interacting with it. Do you stop, as when you're reading a book, and say, "Wait a minute! That's not what you said before"? Of course not; the content keeps streaming, and it takes you along with the current.

Okay, so after the show is over, and the 8 o'clock noose update, and the series of commercials, and the beginning of the next show which you'll just catch a couple minutes of, and a break for some public service announcement, and the 9 o'clock update -- do you turn it off, sit back on the sofa, close your eyes, and deeply, deeply think about what you've just heard, the images you've seen, the barrage of messages aimed at you? Do you say, "What was it the newscaster said -- those numbers . . . how did they get those numbers? And who was the expert they were interviewing? Why, if this is supposed to be a balanced, factual show, don't they bring in someone who disagrees with the expert? Are there no dissenting voices?" And that's just if you watched the news, which is supposed to contain more intellectual content than a reality show.

Thinking, unlike mentally ingesting images and dialogue from a screen, is a highly creative, highly concentrating process: you can't passively do it. You must actively engage your mind, ask questions, poke around for answers the same way your tongue prods at a chipped tooth. Of all people who should be seriously, intensely, constantly thinking, it is artists -- because we are the ones who are supposed to be looking at the world around us, exploring it, interpreting it through our brushes and canvas.

The benefits of thinking cannot be overrated, in the same way the benefits of watching TV cannot be underrated enough. The one is energizing. The other drains the heart, mind, and soul of all vitality.