Thoughtcraft 2-1: Territory: Physical and Social Space
We want some ideas to take physical shape. We want others to take over minds. In either case, the idea’s path to realization is a quest for territory.
For many people, their very job is to originate or assist ideas whose bent is to change the physical environment. For others, modifying physical space is an important form of self-expression. Yet very few ideas can be effectively moved from vision into physical reality without making space in their social environments, since few individual thinkers have total control over much physical space. Ideas not requiring physical realization vie only for mental space.
This is true even for some thoughts that are kept private; the mnemonic jingle or acronym rehearsed in order to memorize a list is employed precisely for its ability to claim space in the mind and occupy it. Even where the mental space to be claimed is in a single mind, I find it most helpful to think of this as social space, for two reasons: first, those constraints on thinking which we will analyze in the realm of the group have their counterparts in the individual mind; second (and this partly explains the first), many of these constraints arise from the individual’s group affiliations and memberships, so that even if we were not employing a “society of mind” model (which I do), we would still have to deal with the individual thinker as the social being he or she is.
The concern of the rest of this book is the quest of an idea for territory, its journey from conception to realization. In studying the matter, I am taking an idea-centric point of view. If the ideas themselves were the readers of this book, it would constitute their manual for conducting a successful quest. In taking this approach, I fully realize that ideas are not this book’s readers. I understand that in talking about an idea’s will I am guilty of pathetic fallacy, and while it may seem otherwise, I never forget that my goal is actually to serve the human beings who originate, adopt, adapt, and find their lives shaped by ideas.