I have had a penchant in recent months for studying Canada. I have lived in the usa my whole life, but I remember having a fascination for Canada in my youth, and I have recently discovered many good audio, visual, and textual internet resources for keeping up with current events up north. One thing that I’ve been very impressed with is how rational Canadians are. There are laws about public discourse which make it so that journalists have to portray events honestly, and they have to be aware of their effect on society.

This reminds me of the many stories passed about in our society about the head and the heart. The usa is more like the heart - people value being spontaneous, they act based on their feelings. Canada is more like the head - they think things through carefully.

One thing I’m seeing about the Canadians who I see on the television feeds I can pick up through the internet is that they often look very worried - their faces are contorted with consternation. I understand that an ethic of rationalism might put a person into the mindset where she or he feels that she has to reason every decision through in real time. And worry becomes a part of that person’s life, only because it seems rational to predict negative outcomes, and to think through all the possibilities.

I have had a habit of delving into much intense thought. But I also have learned to feel carefree about things.

So I have some advice ;-)

The best way I can explain this, is to ask you to look at the mind with me. People often wrap up all of the things one experiences and endeavors in the mind into overbroad vague words like “thinking” or “intelligence.” However, in order to truly understand our own minds we have to look more specifically at the various activities we do in them. Now, human beings fall into different personality types - and the optimal way a person uses her or his mind will be different, depending on her personality. One should look and study the people you admire most - how do they seem to be using their minds from moment to moment, in different situations, and at different stages of a conversation?

We can separate the task of reasoning out, and see that reason is a thing which anyone can do - no matter how confused they happen to be, or how slowly they seem to be thinking that day. Reason is a process of weighing ideas, of looking at cause and effect. It can happen over a brief time period, or an extended time period - it can happen all at once, or it can happen in different sessions.

Now, of course mental habits are more general, and not specific to any thought or feeling, or any one sort of idea. Mental habits are the structure which you have laid out in your mind for thinking about various things in various life-circumstances. One practices these things and hones them, and from then on they flow fairly easily and automatically. Smooth thought does not happen by virtue of an ethic of careful reasoning, but because of a person having developing good daily mental habits.

To go futher here, I would have to fork my little essay and deal specifically with my own ethics when it comes to mental habits - ethics which are shared by many people of a similar personality type. However, I’m not sure how constructive that is, however, because I would most certainly offend people who would esteem an entirely different flavor of mental technique.

So I think I’ll leave this blog entry in bite-size form. That’s probably wise, given my fondness for the kind of language I use when I write.

The synopsis of what I’m saying, to put it simply, is that mental discipline leads to a carefree attitude. Your mind is either your prison, or your playground. And one has to be deft with it, in order to be happy. And this deftness I’m talking about has nothing to do with the ability to reason, it has to do with the ability to think smoothly from moment to moment.