Let's start with a little experiment.
I'll tell you A few things to think about, and then ask you some questions after an image to not spoil it.
Think about a chore you need to do.
Think about a situation you've been awkward in public.
Think about something you'd like to make, about a specific action required to make it.
Think about the path you'd take to the local police station, look it up if you need to.
Now try and remember in what way you thought about those things. Was it verbal or visual, or possibly something else?
Take note of it.
The form of thinking I was most aware of before I started thinking about thinking. The internal dialogue. We talk to ourselves just like we'd talk to other people, we have conversations with ourselves, we ask ourselves questions and we answer them. This is a sort of "higher level" thinking that is very very conscious, which is why we are most aware of this form of thinking.
An interest fact about language driven thinking, is that the language we think in has a measurable effect on our thoughts. In English, we tend to assign blame when describing what happened.
"Brian broke the bed".
While in Spanish, so I've been told, you tend not to do so.
"The bed broke".
That second one doesn't sound very natural in English, but should sound fine in Spanish. Unless I got the language mixed up. In English, this breakage is more upsetting, because someone is at fault.
There are some less used languages, mostly in tribes, that don't have words for left and right, and so they are forced to think in absolute terms, north, south, west and east. Making them acutely aware in which cardinal direction they are facing, even after going into a building, or tunnels.
Sometimes we think visually. We picture something in our minds, and we can see it. This can be a memory, a vision of something we want to draw, or a picture we'd like to take. Sometimes it's a set of actions we would need to perform, which are just too complex to describe with words.
I personally tend to think of sexual things visually, as well as material projects. I envision what actions I would need to do.
Sometimes I even think about cooking visually. I don't say to myself "Need onions, carrots..." I just visualize myself taking them out of the fridge and cutting them.
A few years ago I found myself thinking in meme form. This was after I started using reddit, and was exposed to /r/adviceanimals, which is an onslaught of image macros on popular meme pictures. Thinking in meme form was the primary reason I filtered out that subreddit, I hated it. There are still some memes I just can't avoid, though. They are so ingrained in me, they just pop up, like this one:
Or how I feel about memes in general:
The thing that actually prompted this post. Today as I was doing my morning run, I started thinking about my progress in blog post form. I had headlines, and communicated it to my readers. Then I noticed I was doing it, and thought it was too early to post about it, because I haven't achieved my goal yet. But I started thinking about thinking in blog form, in blog fo... Damnit. Stupid meme thinking again.
So, how did you think about the things I asked you to think about? Did you just verbally list off the chores you had to do, or did you visualize doing them?
Did you possibly think of an awkward moment in socially awkward penguin template?
Did you describe to yourself what you need to do, or did you visualize making it?
Did you visualize the route you'll walk or drive to the police station from eye view, or possibly did you visualize it from a google maps view? Or maybe you just explained to yourself you'd need to take a left on a certain street?
Do you have other forms of thinking? would love to hear it.
