Conceptual Consciousness

Why don't I think conceptually as much as I could?

I witnessed myself getting side tracked from productive effort today pursuing what is likely to be a "red herring" in the current context that my client brought up. I had the thought that successful business people don't get detoured like this? I found that my motivation had shifted from ROI to pleasing what appeared to be irrational requests from the people who are paying me. What I needed to do was stop and reassess, challenge the ideas, and provide the estimate of what the current activities were costing us.

Did I do this? Well sorta ...

Concepts are so remarkably intangible! We all know the concept of circle, but our imagination can only imagine specific instances of circles! So obvious once it is pointed out, but it wasn't pointed out to me until I read about it (Mortimer Adler's "Ten Philosophical Mistakes" ?) when I about 58 years old! Even worse is that this was my second reading of this great book and I had totally missed the idea the first time! My goodness what if I had died before that life changing insight was revealed to me? What other life changing insights are still to come?

For those of us who aren't clear about the concept circle, consider money. This is a concept that everyone seems to understand, but we cannot imagine the concept money, all we can imagine are specific examples of what represents money, e.g. gold, bills, goods, life style, etc. Money is a concept that most people don't fundamentally understand, such as the information value of prices, but everyone knows how to earn it and invest it. Keep in mind that knowing and doing are two different things. This is where I started this post. I do things that I know, conceptually, are not right, but in the moment my sensations, feelings and imagination run the show called "me."

And I suspect I have a fundamental fear of thinking conceptually, that I will lose something that I can't quite verbalize. What is this fear? Napoleon Hill would probably tell me it is fear of success. Ayn Rand might say it is evading the responsibility of being human. Aristotle may say that it is the lack of courage to live the planned life because the unplanned life isn't worth living! Gurdjieff may hint that I have allowed my self to become identified with my imagination, I am a sleeping automaton. All useful pieces of advice and in a sense they are all saying the same thing to me, aren't they?

What if I had mastered these ideas as a young person, instead of a man with gray hair?