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R: Perfection of the Mind

According to Rene Descartes the perfection of the mind is found in three things:

1. Promptitude of thought– Thought that reacts to the immediate situation, that can be formed and dismissed without any great hesitation, that can be analytical and critical and yet at the same time be vulnerable to the spontaneity that only great minds can offer.

2. Clearness and distinctness of imagination – Not strictly speaking originality but the ability to think beyond that which is presented to you, beyond the tangible answers and things of pure clarity.  To be able to ask those questions which are most vital, even if they are questions of nonsense and banality–for sometimes it is a question that seems so simple, so plain, so uninspired and unproviding, that can reward us with the most breadth and depth of understanding (given we pursue the ends of such questions with such fervor and depth, given we overturn every possibility, and glance up every tree and down every root, branch, and leaf, given we sleep not in the search for such answers. given we have resolve enough to see the question through whatever unexpected, obstructing paths and discoveries that are to be hand, that we have resolve enough to reach the ultimate resolution untainted by cowardice or indecision.)

3. Fullness and readiness of memory – To be able to recall that which has happened, to be able to retain more, and then to be able to exert and extract the fundamental lessons provided at the core of each memory. 

This is what makes a great mind.

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M: On Academia and Free Thinking

Academia poses a huge danger to true intellect. In university, students consume information, process it, memorize it, and take it as absolute truth. If humans in the past did this, we would perhaps still think we are the center of the universe. If Einstein did this, we would never have calculus.  we are in danger today of brain-death. People are susceptible to believing everything they read if it is printed in a book, if a professor teaches it in a classroom. 

We fail to realize that nothing is absolute, nothing is final. this is why academia is a danger to true intellect. Students get in to the habit of blind acceptance, for they are taught to trust and worship every word that slips from the mouths of their professors.  students aren’t asked to question or to challenge what they read and hear, but process it, compare it, rewrite it–rather than invent something of their own, something critical and examined. 

And this habit, of reprocessing, of letting others do the real thinking, leaks out in to their daily lives. They define love by the spectacles and exhibitions that Hollywood produces, through emulating television stars, they develop loose morals and lack principles, they desensualize and devalue sex, they degrade the value of relationships-romantic and platonic.  Academia needs to shift before it destroys our minds.

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M: Living ‘for’ the Moment

Everyone tells you “Life is too short” or perhaps to “Live in the moment”, but I doubt that with how much, in our lives, is dominated by the shadows of our past and the notions of our future that we can or that we know what that actually is. Maybe its all about learning to move and negotiate with those parameters to learn what the moment actually brings.

“For the moment,” thats the challenge.