Thinking Alive

The Basement

Sunday, April 12th, 2009 by Brian

0 The process of writing this book can be traced back to one of my earliest memories. I was maybe five or six years old, give or take.

0 It was when I learned to be unafraid of the dark. At the same moment I learned about philosophy — about discovery, openness and enlightenment — though maybe I wasn’t aware of it in quite that way. In retrospect the episode is loaded with meaning… 

0 On my way down into our unfinished basement, in my absent-mindedness I forgot to turn on the light. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, where the light from upstairs finally abandoned me, some adventurous impulse urged me forward, blind.

0 By memory I cautiously navigated around the big pile of firewood, past the tool bench, past my dad’s dirty work clothes hanging from the joists, past all the odd items and boxes being stored down there, until I finally managed to reach the pull-string to turn on the light at the end of the room, feeling it brush against my grasping hands.

0 But I didn’t turn it on.

0 When I got hold of the string I felt like I had conquered something — my fear of the dark basement. I stopped to revel and reflect on the moment, instinctively turning around to look back at where I came from. By then my eyes had adjusted and I could make out the vague outlines of the woodpile, the boxes, the tools, and the dirty coveralls.

0 And then I felt an great surge of insight — a kind of visibility beyond the visible surface of things…

0 A moment earlier, facing the apparent void at the bottom of the stairs, it really felt like I didn’t know what was in front of me. But that turned out to be wrong — silly even. I had been down there enough times to be almost certain what was in front of me.

0 The basement itself only appeared unknown. The real unknown was the source of my fear — someplace I hadn’t seen before and couldn’t navigate by memory.

0 Somewhere beneath or behind the curtain of experience there is an underlying structure — unlit areas of the mind where our conceptual plumbing comes in and goes out, where our intellectual tools and fuels are stored, where we throw our most useless articles and dirtiest laundry.

0 Down there, in the dark, where few people explore long enough for their eyes to adjust — and certainly not long enough to find the light — without our awareness or control, is where most of our ideas and actions are determined. 

0 I didn’t articulate it anything like that at the time, but the sense of discovery, the feeling of insight and enlightenment — shining a light into a space that was previously unknown — really captivated me. 

0 What I did articulate was some truism about overcoming fears.

0 I don’t remember exactly what it was — only that I was very pleased with myself. It sounded like a “famous saying” — like something some philosopher would have written — and I started to get the feeling that coming up with more “famous sayings” would be fun.

0 A short time later it occurred to me that famous sayings can’t stand alone. They’re only the most representative bits of larger sets of ideas; in turn, the ideas in books and conversations develop over the course of years of observation, ongoing discovery, and continuous refinement and focus.

0 And I had only just started to see…

Tags: discovery, enlightenment, insight, philosophy, unknown, youth

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