Thoughtcraft 1.7: Random Thought and Reverie
While understanding our motives will contribute to self-control in thought, and thus to a better-controlled thought process, this does not imply that control is entirely a virtue. Those thoughts which we might call random, and those thought processes which have no discernable aim or goal, which I call reverie, are both important.
Random thought I define by two characteristics: it has no discernible aim or goal, and it is not bounded by the constraints we normally place on our goal-oriented thought. These constraints include those of formal logic, in which most people are trained in at least some rudiments. But the constraints are limited neither to formal logic nor to any logic of which we are aware. For example, when we are awake, those thoughts which are formulated in words will mostly be formulated according to the rules of syntax which we learned in early childhood, and which most of us aren’t even aware of knowing. But many of us have the experience of being awakened in the middle of dreaming, or of coming back to consciousness when we have been halfway to sleep, and knowing that we had been thinking a sentence that “didn’t make sense,” meaning that it violated our accepted rules of syntax. Similarly, in our sleep-dreams (more, usually, than in our day-dreams), scenes are played out that violate every good playwright’s sense of decent drama. Shifts of scene are sudden and nonsensical. Persons change their identities instantly, and there is often little of “plot,” that is, a sequence of actions which build from each other and hang together to tell a single story. Most often, the compete non-sequitur rules, and all that is sustained for any time is simply mood.
Reverie overlaps with random thought, but includes a great deal of thought that is bounded, sometimes quite firmly, by the rules we use to construct meaning. Thus it has in common with all random thought only the absence of aim or goal.
Random thought plays an irreplaceable role in creativity. All innovation-in art, science, social life, and business-is based on the mind’s ability to put together things that previously had been separate, frequently kept so by conscious or unconscious rules.
Reverie is often without aim or goal simply because there is no discernable means of connecting it with a goal. Young children have many dreams of what they will do when they grow up, and even those dreams which happen to coincide with what one will actually do are strictly reverie at those times in life when one is too young to conceive of what must actually take place in order for one to become a fireman, zookeeper, or President. Later, some of these dreams will actually direct the thinker towards action; that is, they will come to possess aim and goal, and the child will find a path toward a practiced identity and a career. This is not restricted to children. In these days of increased life expectancy, more and more people have fascinating second careers which could only be undertaken after completing the first. As with the child, during the times when there is no course of action that can move one directly toward the goal, the thinking effectively has no goal. But when the freedom and opportunity arrive, and the dreamed-of path is actually taken, then all thought of taking it possesses aim and goal. Also as with the child, there is a transition period, during which the opportunity of actualizing the dream is seen to approach, and the thinking will become, often gradually, more purposeful, and lead more toward action. The achievements of late life have been fed and formed by reverie.
Both childhood and late life are extreme examples. Nearly all achievement is the result of thinking that begins as reverie and then, quickly or slowly, becomes purposeful.