"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning.” ~John Stuart Mill
Most people have heard of a guy named Aristotle--that old Greek philosopher dude who was supposedly pretty smart. Far fewer people know anything about Epicurus, who was born in Greece while Aristotle was still alive, and who founded his own school of philosophy after Aristotle died. The Aristotelians and the Epicureans were intense rivals back in ancient times and taught two completely different approaches on how to live a good life.
Aristotle believed that living a virtuous life was of utmost importance. He saw virtues as innate and undeniable truths that were made apparent through divine providence. In line with this top-down hierarchy he taught mainly through syllogisms, deductive reasoning which relied on drawing logical conclusions about the world (and how to behave in it) based on predetermined premises. The Aristotelian ethos is responsible for having shaped most of Western thought, and is evident in how children are raised in public schools. Children are given laws first and then taught to work backwards to prove them.
In contrast, Epicurus believed that living a happy life was tantamount to success. He chose to observe the world first and derive truths from observations, a bottom-up approach. He taught mainly in the discipline of inductive reasoning, which used patterns and facts to form probabilisms, or likely explanations of those phenomenon. Epicureans were incorrectly labeled as hedonists, which led to their philosophies falling out of favor in the educational sphere. Inductive reason was also much harder to teach to children, requiring patience and humility that most teachers lacked.
Multiply Aristotelian patterns of thought over two thousand years of time, and the result is the modern Westernized brain. Most Westerns operate on a daily basis according to a set of assumptions about how the world works and they don't take more than a second to question the original propositions. They wake up when their alarm goes off, they eat according to government guidelines, they get in individual automobiles to commute to work, they work because they are told that's what is expected, to get money to live the life that is modeled by other, successful Westerners. The reason that they do it this way, is because it is highly efficient and highly repeatable. The only, problem is that such a system cannot peaceably resolve contradictory evidence. In such cases, overthinking becomes inevitable and the entire system slows down.
The Aristotelian mind is programmed to go linearly from point A to point Z, but in the case that point B along the way is not on that line, then the thinking circuits get activated. The mind will ruminate constantly on why point B is out of place, while continuing to proceed to point Z, until it runs into another point out of place, at which time it will fixate on that point, forgetting all about point B. In this model the brain expends all of its resources on conforming anomalies to fit the assumptions, instead of the other way around. And those anomalies that can't be bullied, are exiled or forgotten. Overthinking is highly inefficient and represents the friction that the brain must endure in order to continue to operate under false assumptions instead of adapting them.
Conversely, an Epicurean mind attempts to approach life more fluidly. Truth is a best guess about life given the totality of events, and not just those that are more convenient. Overthinking is not a problem because outliers are expected rather than feared. Variations are viewed relative to their position in an ecosystem and patterns of thought are holistic rather than linear, pluralistic rather than individualized. The Epicureans still valued virtue, but not in the same pedantic nature as the Aristotelians. For them virtue emerged through doing good things for their own sake, and not because of an imposed structure.
Interestingly, Aristotelianism is not completely devoid of inductive reasoning. The main difference is that the revelations it makes from the bottom-up must be integrated into the already present zeitgeist from the top-down, so change is never truly complete. The postmodern movement in the 1900s was a partial victory for the Epicurean brain and led people to question the obvious inequities that existed for women and racial minorities. Unfortunately, as these breakthroughs became integrated back into the mainstream, they suffered from the same failure of thought that created them. Freedom for these groups actually led to different types of bondage and suffering, which are now a layer deeper and much harder to change.
What type of brain are we running in our own heads? If we find ourselves overthinking more than we want to then...
Perhaps the best answer to our problems is a completely new approach.
Perhaps it will require going a few steps backwards to look objectively at the facts.
And, more importantly it will require us to do more acting and less thinking.
Require us to step out of our heads and onto the dance floor of life.
And actually listen for the beat instead of hoping it will simply match our movements.
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