I’ve been thinking, lately, about how much time I spend thinking. I find contemplation to be a very important part of my daily regimen, to the extent that social interaction is non-existent some days; a lot of days, really.
Of course much of my thinking is about people, wondering about how some folks arrive at the opinions they hold, how groups of like-minds take on a public identity which lifts individuals out of their private worlds and offers a public character which seems to be what a lot of people crave. On a personal level, social networking is pretty easy, social media being what it is, and, I guess, having a large group of ‘friends’ tends to fend off perceived loneliness even if it is delusional (any sort of personal closeness, that is).
If social striving and seeking public identity gets out of hand, if popularity is too high a priority, danger lurks. When you think of individuals in the spot-light these days it’s unlikely anyone’s public persona provides much more than a caricature; which certainly can’t be what anyone wants. Better to spend more time thinking.
