06/17/05 - Thought Processes I

Picture what happens when you drop a dollop of something semi-liquidy to the ground from a height of several feet. Go do it if you need to so you really have a good visual. Yogurt maybe. Or cottage cheese. See how the majority of the stuff stays where it impacted? Think of that dollop of stuff you dropped as the germ of an idea. Then think of that space where the majority of stuff stayed as the range of thought that, when a idea is dropped into their psyche, most people encompass, most of the time.

Now look at the rest of the mess. See how bits of the stuff also shot out in every direction? You have streamers of stuff still connected to the mass by thin strands that stretch out aways - some short, some long. You also have bits that became disconnected from the mass completely, forming tiny blobs of their own… often farther from initial impact than you would have imagined.

Imagine cleaning up the main mess - everything that's connected - and walk away. You can imagine how someone coming along later may not grasp how those outlying tiny bits (that weren't connected, therefore were not cleaned up) came to be there. There are no longer any clues - no visual connection - to explain how they came into being. It would be a mystery to them. Odd. Annoying. Maybe even frightening.

Now expand your splatter off of a flat surface & into more dimensions: gently pop a suspended water balloon or something. You will find that you can somewhat control the majority of the splatter based on how hard you were pushing when you popped it, and in what direction you were pushing. But you can't control all of the stuff - some bits will splatter the opposite way, and no matter what, you've got bits going in more directions than you did when you were simply hitting the floor.

Drop an idea into a mind… the splatter pattern is phenomenal.