Thoughts can make us completely mad. Religious doctrines, fundamentalism, political views, racism, bigotry, complacency, superstition, us-and-them-ism, guilt, shame, narcissism, too low or too high self-esteem, fascism, liberalism, neo-liberalism, conservatism, neo-conservatism, communism—everything we live for is made of thoughts.
All religions and political ideas have led to disasters: gruesome wars, climate change, environmental pollution, the holocaust, slavery, witch hunts, the cultural revolution in China, the killing fields in Cambodia...
So, what are thoughts made of? Electricity and the release of transmitter substances in synapses? Words?
Are there right-wing and left-wing neurons? Are there optimistic and pessimistic neural pathways? Are there spiritual and evil neural pathways?
A nicotine addict who stops taking nicotine will get unbelievably negative thoughts. Why is that? Does the absence of nicotine influence thoughts in nicotine addicts?
Where do ordinary and healthy people get their stupid ideas from? Do they emerge from the brain stuff, or do they enter the brain from outside? Is the brain both a receiver and a transmitter of crap? Talk shows?
Where do new ideas come from? From out of nowhere?
And where do the genuinely friendly thoughts come from?
You can't stop the thoughts and ideas in your brain, but you can see them for what they are: thoughts. They are not necessarily the truth. You can question or ignore your stupid thoughts and convictions—if you want to. But it is hard, and it takes time. (It took the German nazis 20 years after the war to begin questioning their nazism. It took 1800 years for the Christian churches to realize that slavery was not a decent system.)
Does this idea of calling out one's own thinking change anything? Can it improve our dire situation? I don't think so. An individual can jump off the train at the next station if he has the money to sustain himself, but there is no hope for a fundamental change on the group level. It is too late for us. We missed getting off the train because we were lost in a book or a computer screen. Humankind will be gone within a few years. Our ecological habitat will be ruined in a nuclear war or because of climate change. We are heading for a catastrophic train wreck.
