Seeds of Thought

On turning acorns into oak trees

“For one does not need a great number of words, but words that are effective.”

- Seneca, Letter 38

Everybody has too much to say today and everybody is seemingly an expert in almost everything. Their knowledge is in everything from social justice to content creation from politics to self-diagnosis. What a world we are living in where everybody is so intelligent!

The truth is we aren’t that intelligent. Well, a great deal number of us anyway and I’m not talking about the standard IQ. Most people live their lives on the surface level of information, always moving forward and never digging down. This is a great shame because the last time I checked precious stones weren’t found at surface level.

Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein are two fairly modern geniuses but one thing that is not often spoken about is that aside from their seismic contribution to their sciences they were deep thinkers. Darwin so much that it took him 20 years before he published his work because he was trying to find every single argument against his thesis. Both men were constantly trying to find evidence that contradicted their beliefs. Just imagine what could be possible if more people simply thought like that.

I’ve spoken recently about anchoring and group biases and how important it is to be an independent thinker today more than ever. After all, Deep Fakes et al.

I’m reading Poor Charlie’s Almanack at the minute alongside Robert Greene’s The Laws of Human Nature and they are both eye-opening regarding how easily we are fooled by our own psychology and how easily we are manipulated by others. Is our defence really as bad as the Maginot line?

But it is my old friend Seneca again who offers the simplest pearls of wisdom.

“A seed is a little thing, and yet when it lands in the right spot, it unfolds its resources and expands into a great and growing plant.”

- Letter 38

There’s not much we can do about a lot of the information we consume. We can come off social media and not watch mainstream news, or any news actually because it’s almost all worthless but we can’t walk around with headphones on and tape over our eyes. We can’t do much about the toxicity of online people. We can’t rationalise with them that the way they speak and act online is false and that they surely wouldn’t act like that in real life. It’s too much to ask the social media puppet masters to censor and expose these monsters. After all, I tend to agree with Elon, if you want free speech you can’t just have what you want to hear. Free speech is free speech. Censoring any of it isn’t free speech, it’s censorship and while I never condone or agree with despicable language or behaviour, online or other you can’t have your cake and eat it. That’s what law is for and if they’re not doing their job either, well, you get exactly what we’re getting now I suppose. A shit show.

But one thing you can do is choose what content you consume. You can also, for free if you can believe, get to choose your thoughts and reactions to what you consume. Impossible, you say! It simply can not be that easy.

What you let into your brain can quickly become who you are. It can take over and mask as an identity.

“Reasoning does the same: when you examine it, it is of small extent; but when you put it into effect it grows. Only a few words are said, but if the mind receives them well, they become tall and strong.”

- Letter 38

Seneca is speaking about the good of words here and how only a few words are needed to flourish into metaphorical trees. We imagine an old sage handing down worldly wisdom to their grandchildren. But if a small amount of correct and timely words can inspire and guide us, surely they can enrage and discourage us?

When we consume information and hear other people speak, in life or online now and again something happens to us. We feel a twinge in our body that almost compels us to act or speak immediately. It is here where you have to be rational, to be a good independent thinker because those few words you just heard are seeds. They can either flourish and be beautiful plants and trees or they can be invasive species.

The choice is simply yours.

“After planting seeds the gardener tends to their garden, for they know that the most beautiful of plants and trees attract the deadliest of parasites.”

The School of Knowledge

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