Welcome to a new blog: incandescent thinking
Incandescence is usually related to that brightly burning light at the centre of a flame or filament.
According to the Oxford Lexico Dictionary it may mean:
1) emitting light as a result of being heated;
2) full of emotion or passionate;
3) extremely angry.
To combine these three things, therefore, would mean a type of thinking that is extreme, that questions something and that is related to passion or perhaps anger but some emotional response and that ultimately sheds light on whatever is being investigated. In fact thinking, talking and writing incandescently does not mean to be unnecessarily emotive but to hone emotion into a critical response to an issue or topic. This kind of thinking is the reasoning that takes a problem, turns it upside down and focuses its beam on it until it burns away all the hype and gets to the core. It is the type of thinking that has us sitting on the edge of our seats wanting more, and energizes us, changing our worldview and inspiring us to indulge in our own brand of incandescent thinking.
In a world where we are surrounded by mis- and disinformation it can be hard to know what to believe and in our "age of information" the borders between real and artificial are becoming increasingly blurred. In this world, even more then, do we need to be curious digging down to get to the origin of what is said. This is not a case of taking polemical positions and then defending them, it is rather the quest to understand. It means respecting your interlocutor, even when you really disagree with them, and trying to find common ground rather than to engage in battle. Of course, to do this is easier said than done, but the longest journey, as they say, starts with the first step so here goes.
Creativity, imagination and incandescent thinking
Creativity involves taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary and it is linked to imagination. Many of us protest vociferously when asked to use our imaginations, saying that we done have much, but if you did not have any imagination you would not be able to even get out of bed in the morning and start your day. Imagination means walking up and visualizing yourself going into the kitchen and putting the kettle on, or thinking about the power of the water jet in your shower. It means deciding in advance what you want to eat for breakfast or what you are going to say in your meeting later that day. We all use it constantly and it is an essential part of what makes us human. If we had had no imagination we would never have gone to the Moon.
Creativity, on the other hand, means taking things, concepts, insights, and using this imagination to link them until something new is created. In a nutshell it is about linking seemingly unrelated things and finding new, even strange, outlandish connections between them until something new is created. This may also seem to be rather abstract but is actually a very normal part of the way our minds work. If I say the word "green" and "bank" you will probably start thinking about connections straight away. This could be the green bank of a river, which is covered in grass, or it could be a green bottle bank, where empty bottles are stored or even bank in the sense of a financial institution which invests some of its earnings in "green" or ecological initiatives. The list continues (You might like to try and brainstorm how many different links you can find) and to associate ideas like this in different contexts is a very natural thing to do. It is creativity on a day to day level. Thinking creatively by creating links like this is one route into incandescent thinking. It gives us the chance to question things or to look at them in a new light but this is only the first step.
Using imagination creatively
Using imagination creatively involves associating two or more usually unrelated things such as "water" and "market". Perhaps the two associations that spring immediately to mind are water or floating markets, where produce is sold from boats.
another association may focus on "water" as the product" and the "market" as a sider concept, referring to all those transactions where water as energy is sold or exchanged. Creating something new from this involves going even deeper into the nouns themselves or maybe changing the part of speech. "Water" as a verb, for instance, may be associated with plants but if we say the heavens opened and watered the fragile market stalls below, then we are creating a new agent, not the human one but one related to weather.
This was a creative "play" with words and ideas but the next step is to take this further and to look at the way people perhaps use those words and ideas and what is subconsciously associated with them.
A rapid google search for water and market led me to this site: https://water-market-europe-2020.b2match.io/
This "Water Market Europe" is a conference which showcases and develops methods of providing water as a resource. Other results show the water market being presented as a highly lucrative market ripe for investment. Water, in fact, in 2020 is considered to be similar to gold and oil as a commodity which will be profitable https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/water-futures-to-trade-on-wall-street-first-time-ever-2020-12-1029870836
From this very fast reading of the water market discourse we can already see the emergence of investment, business and water as a source of wealth, rather than the basis of life. A Google search for water market investment, in fact, returned 802, 000,000results in less than 60 seconds. Of course the idea of water as the source of life is what is actually being promoted here, and a search for "water", "source of life" returned many more results: 3,590,000,000 in just over a minute.
What we have done here is to take seemingly unrelated ideas, to associate them and then to search the Internet to explore the discourse around them (very briefly).
The next step is to determine a problem which can be explored. In this case it is the problem of water as a commodity and how this might impact us.
Jaron Lanier: a scary digital prospect for the future
Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of virtual reality is now one of those who seeks to underline its dangers. In his 2014 book "Who owns the future" he outlines a frightening prospect for the future. On page 13 he warns that although so many digital tools and content are free, other things may become increasingly scarce until we may, in his words:
"You sit at the edge of the ocean, wherever the coast will be after Miami is abandoned to the waves. You are thirsty. Random little clots of dusts are full-on robotic interactive devices, since advertising companies long ago released plagues of smart dust on the world. That means you can always speak and some machine will be listening. "I'm thirsty. I need water." The seagull responds. 'You are not rated as enough of a commercial prospect for any of our sponsors to pay for freshwater for you.' You say, 'But, I have a penny.' 'Water costs two pennies'. 'There's an ocean three feet away! Just desalinate some water!' 'Desalinization is licensed to water carriers. You need to subscribe. However, you can enjoy free access to any movie ever made, or pornography or a simulation of a deceased family member for you to interact with as you die from dehydration..."
This is an extreme vision and does not necessarily mean that this will happen, just that it is one possible future scenario. It might happen. Looking at what is happening around us and where the actions being taken may lead is one way of exploring our world and developing our own knowledge.
We have come a long way from our initial association or "water" and "market" but going beyond the simple association and looking at the discourse itself has taken us to a whole other problem that we could perhaps investigate in greater depth.
Curiosity and Foucault
At the beginning of this blogpost I cited Foucault because I am so indebted to him and his approach to discourse. To look at that quotation in a little more depth we can deconstruct it:
1. “Curiosity evokes ‘concern’; this means, in the example above, being curious and reading around what people are saying which leads to a problem. Of course that is only one way into the discourse. You may begin with the problem and look at the surrounding discourse as a result of this.
2. it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; this leads us to create associations. In the example above the associations were between "water" as a source of life and "water" as a commodity. This led us to the idea expressed by Lanier, a little earlier in his book, that whenever something , such as video or music content online, is free, something else will become more expensive. The videos may be free but the cost of subscribing to the channel increases, for instance. This is a situation which is already beginning to exist and could become more extreme in the future, until little by little we find ourselves on the beach with no water.
3. a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us; this means to question things that we take for granted perhaps, the fact that already in 2020 it is not considered to be strange that "water" should be thought of as a commodity like gold to invest in.
4. a certain relentlessness to break up our familiarities in the Western world business and investment is very familiar to us and is considered to be normal, as is the commercial spread of the digital world. It would be advisable perhaps, however, to stop and to consider this "normality", where it comes from, who plays the different roles in these domains and whose discourse is more powerful.
5. and to regard otherwise the same things; a fervor to grasp what is happening and what passes; a casualness in regard to the traditional hierarchies of the important and the essential.
This final step involves stepping to one side and imagining things as being different. What would our world be like if business and investment were not so central? What and who makes them so? Who or what might determine or point to other things that are important or essential?
Welcome to the world of incandescent thinking. I hope it had you on the edge of your seat. :-)
