doing work, again
doing work always gets me thinking. ha! get it? because, philosophy? ha. im writing things, im trying to figure out a better way to trace my line of thinking, make sure the things im trying to argue for make sense to me. its interesting. its hard to argue for something. its such a natural process, but its just one of those things, once you notice you're doing it and take a closer look it becomes harder. like breathing. your mind naturally comes to its own conclusions. i notice this, i read something, i know the lines along which im supposed to argue, and before i know it, i already have a conclusion. this of course doesn't feel to me in that moment like a real conclusion, because it feels like it just came to me. can i trace this too? i read something, and i have a feeling of what i think about it. i have made an evaluation. then, i have to trace that thinking, i have to find out whether the evaluation i have subconsciously made is sound. where do i start? do i start with the second to last thought, right before the conclusion? i guess it depends on the context, but in most cases id say its the other way around. for me, at least. id go back to the beginning, and id try to figure out the very first clue that gives me ground for an argument. this isn't usually a very sophisticated process, i just look for interesting things. im realizing as i write this down i rely on a lot of my intuition to help me decipher things and form arguments. is that bad? anyway. once i find something that seems interesting, i try to think of what makes it interesting. this used to be hard, i remember. trying to understand why a certain part of a text stands out, what makes it special. a part of why this was so hard for me was that i was too focused on trying to find out what REALLY was special in a text. i did not realize i could just... make stuff up. as long as i argued for it of course. but you kind of had to make stuff up. is it really making stuff up though? there has to be a kind of process going on in your mind when you read something. a part of you that is constantly evaluating, constantly consuming, and doing the mechanical sort of thing that drives you insane. and then you have to decipher what that part of you decided, what conclusion it came to. sometimes this is just as hard. you'll feel the presence of a very strong conclusion, but you cant quite put your finger on what it is! how strange is that? at least this is what it feels like to me. i think a part of it comes from my critical thinking skills being quite underdeveloped. i think i have a certain level of intuitive critical thinking, but unless i work on it, or figure out how to work on it, it will amount to nothing. im scared to go into my own mind. it feels a bit disassociated from my mind, like, now. its a different thing. maybe. i dont know.