Why Thinking Is Painful

Richard Ostrofsky
(May, 2003)
The most thought-provoking thing in this thought-provoking
age is that we are still not thinking.
- Martin Heidegger
Most people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do.
– Bertrand Russell

Everybody thinks about what to have for dinner, and many can plan how to
find and cook their dinner. We think enough, most of us, to get along in the
world: to eat and mate and raise our children. Still, thought in the sense that
Russell or Heidegger mean is very rare. Such thought is something more
than problem-solving. Rather, it is about what we call philosophical
questions - questions of value and category formation and existential
choice. There are no right and wrong answers to such questions, though
some answers are much better than others. Such questions call for reflection
or contemplation more than for schematization and calculation. Thought
about them thus has a different character from the thinking that we learn in
school and apply on the job
Faced with a question that needs reflection, we take refuge in myth,
doctrine and ordained policy - that is to say, in habitual attitudes and
formulae. Or we avoid thinking by jumping to a conclusion, or else by
shrugging away (or laughing away) the question itself. The strongest and
deepest thinkers catch themselves doing such things from time to time. If
you've never caught yourself doing them, you probably never learned what
thinking means - what it means to wrestle with a question, instead of
shooting it on sight.
To promote my bookstore, I have in mind a series of articles aimed at
explaining what I think I know about the art of thinking. More cogitation in
this city might be good for business. It is true, as Schopenhauer remarked,
that "To turn aside from one's own thoughts to read another man's book is
the sin against the Holy Ghost." On the other hand, thinking - like every
other process - requires some input, some raw material. The raw material
for thinking is found first of all in one's own life and experience, but
secondarily in the life and experience of others as conveyed most succinctly
and articulately in good writing. I have a fair stock of pre-packaged thought
on my shelves, just waiting to supply a missing piece for your own thinking
or annoy you into doing some thinking for yourself.
The first step is probably the hardest: to notice, and face the fact that you
are confused, conflicted, puzzled or ignorant on some matter. We value
sureness in the conduct of our affairs, and do not relinquish it easily.
The prerequisite for thought is doubt, which we experience as a painful
emptiness, comparable perhaps to that of a hungry infant. To think
seriously, we have to train ourselves to endure that empty feeling: not to
satisfy it straight off with the first plausible nourishment we are offered, but
to hold out for the best we find - the best that might be given us.
Serious thought entails some degree of vulnerability, some degree of risk
- even in the most tolerant society, and even if we keep our thoughts to
ourselves. Questioning even the most trivial of received truths exposes the
emptiness at the core of life: The fact that the world is meaningful only
because and in the ways we give it meaning. Acceptance of uncertainty also
puts us at a social disadvantage vis-a-vis those plausible idiots who always
have the answer, who always know exactly what should be done. To doubt
the conventional wisdom (even in silence) is to accept the identity of
madman, outlaw or heretic. Indeed, to speak one's mind can be dangerous,
but not to speak is very lonely. We have to get past this dilemma somehow,
before we can think seriously.
Finally, we must accept that thought is a solitary undertaking, not one
that our social games encourage. It needs quiet and privacy. It needs some
leisure time. It is the purest and most autonomous of pleasures, but has to be
its own reward.