New Years Holiday Part: Wisdom and Thought Leadership

a THOUGHT-place

 As irregular readers will know (and given the irregularity of these issues, how could any reader be otherwise?), having solved the problem of the origins of Cvilization in the tripartite tome "Civilization:Why?, Evolution: When ? and Apocalypse: How?",  the attention of those at Large Mansions, whence the aforementioned issue was solved, turned to the problem of thinking. As with the problems of civilization, the questions surrounding thinking might be taken to be obvious and therefore all completely solved. For example, we know from psychologists, that we only use about 0.01% of the human brain, while we know from parapsychologists that the rest of our brain capacity is taken up with communicating with aliens and the dead, levitating, pschokinesis and telepathy (see Bashar - a cult figure in these parts). And we also know, from CSI,  that if we recieve a massive blow to the head with sufficient force to kill, then processes of thinking will stop. Now this does raise problematic questions such as "Well how do we communicate with the dead if the dead dont think?" but usually you can answer questions like this by talking vaguely about energy or rather energies.
But its not the obvious questions that concern us here at Large Mansions. Its the questions between questions that grab our attention. The type of questions, in other words, that the best minds on the planet struggle with. And when I say great minds, I obviously mean the finest minds know to all humanity, epitomised, concentrated, distilled and

lots of thoughts

co-agulated into one location - the world of business. Prior to
this, my own paltry effort, there have been previous blogs,
thought pieces (that's what I was  thought leaders call articles), and articles about thinking. I'm aware that what I offer here is second best to this canonical literature but I appeal to you to remember, that  gathered round the table at Large Mansions this New Year were not brilliant thinkers like what there is in business. As a group of workers we had probably none of the skills that equip us to think and this should be borne in mind.
I was explaining this very fact to the widely known European philosopher, Will by way of signposting him towards what we wished to do (the previous sentence is classic thought leader sentence construction btw). "Thought leadership" I told him,  "Asks the questions that science doesnt". Then I said " These questions are real questions that help in the real world (of business)". Will, although appearing to be near sleep, was roused by the promise of more alcohol, proferred by his sister, RHB the red haired psychology boffin,  who was also inadequately equipped to deal with questions surrounding thinking,  and asked what these questions might be. As I did for Will, and later had to repeat for Sue, ( who similarly to Will and RHB has no experience of daily life at all and is completely out of touch with the 'sharp end' of life in the UK as she works in the Ivory Tower of  a well known Children's Charity who specialize in social and  educational disadvantage) I will briefly list the brlliant questions thought leaders focus on:

1. How many thoughts shoud the average person have per day? (NB: thought leaders might have more).
2. What's the difference between "brain-thinking" and "mind-thinking"? (NB: thought leaders think more holistically than anyone else)
3. Just what is the right brain doing while the left brain is doing all the work?  (NB: thought leaders think both creatively with the right brain and completely objectively and like a computer with their left brain. This means when it comes to things like evading tax, laying people off, getting round child labour laws by exporting jobs to China and India etc they can come up with brilliantly practical solutions that are also very creative)
4. Can you ever run out of thoughts? (NB: this is only useful if you can run out of thoughts. Then they would become marketable as a limited resource)
5.  ???????????????????????????????????????????????? = Ask questions !
6. Is there a special type of person who is a thought leader? (N.B. Actually research suggests there is....)
7. How can that special type of person who is cut out to be a thought leader, best use their abilities? There's a number of ways of asking/understanding this question, but perhaps the simplest way of re-phrasing it is to ask "How can I use this latest example of applied social Darwinism to exploit people more completely?". You can see why its such a valuable  paradigum.


Now,  infesting Large Mansions at New Year was a group of individuals who , as I have intimated, were possibly  ill-placed to attempt to engage with thought leadership. This group consisted of a rag-tag collection of motley individuals, who's only  notably accomplishment can be described, collectively, as financial failure. Without exception, faced with two choices - one financially very wise and the  other fiscally stupid - every individual on this table chose stupidly. And they have done so repeatedly over the course of their existence, choosing things like intellectual or emotional satisfaction, or on the basis of ethical or moral preferences. On the surface, these indivduals are completely unsuited to thought leadership. However, on the contrary - and just as the preceding few sentences can be read as a casual, anecdotal refutation of 'rationality '  in economic 'theory' - the opposite is true if you read negatively (and, I admit, post modernistically). These people are the ones who need thought leadership because they are the ones (like all the rest of you) who are directly responsible for our debt.

All of which is a pre-amble to a short list and introduction to the thoughts which were written on small scraps of paper by yrs trly during the holiday as they spilled out of wine glass and beer bottle as discussions progressed.I then stuck these bits of paper to the fire, hoping that I would not have to ignite said fire during this wintery season as it would have inevitably resulted in the loss of brilliance. The fireplace thus became our "thought-place" I present here only the best, most brilliant contributions. In most cases I give no context. This is either because the thought is so brilliant it needs no context (known as a 'non-thought' by thought leaders) or so vapid that no-one can remeber what it is about. However, I will indicate who said what:

"Chilli con fusion"  -Will
"Arrogance, ignorance, denial, lies" - RHB (of course!)
"The opposite of what you said" - Ethan
"Restrospective Causation" Yrs truly
"Unparodyable" - Yrs, truly, Sal and Will although Will cant actually say it. This word actually made SAL fall of her chair.
"Thought nexus" Sue
"cliche trotter" Sue (or Sal) directed at either Will or myself)
"..and what-his-name again? Oh yeah, Martin"  Sal and Nel talking about Martin who is sitting directly opposite them.
"dogs are not pack animals" Will .                          !!!
"Dolphins are not dogs, they are sheep" unattributed but probably Will
"thought sick, I am" Sue
"Of course, I have been in bed all day, idiot, so of course no wise thing has been said, idiot" Sal saying "Good Morning".

Of course, there are faults in the above account. We did other things besides discuss deep things. We played "toothless vegetables" in which you have to say the name of a vegetable without smiling or displaying one's gums. We also played Charades and skittles with a stocking on your head (its a long story). We also discussed the conspet of unparodyable at some length, which I may come back to.

As with previous years, when everyone had gone, and when Nel went back to work, Tosh, Calli and I wandered round the house, doing a very small tidy - up (our friends were impeccable as usual so no need to tidy really), all  occasionally miaowing and inspecting everything. The old house watched as we padded through now empty rooms, and eventually it gave a bit of a sigh. Tosh, Calli and myself sat down and told it our friends would be back, sometime, and we'd still be here, so its should'nt be sad.

"Besides" said Calli, "It will be Spring next week lots of sunshine. We can open all the doors, the days will get longer and warmer and you'll feel better. Everyone gets depressed in winter. Maybe you should take a holiday, get some winter sun" she said perkily.

"I'm a house" said the house " I will never fit in a plane. Besides, I cant speak. Neither can you come to mention it, because you're a cat." 

Calli's face adopted a mien that (I knew) means the house was in serious trouble, especially if this developed further. If  Cat vs house, it's cat as Last Man Standing every time.

"Dont argue guys" I said, wanting to avoid a fight after we had all had such a good time " Lets just agree to try and get along this year ok?" . Calli shrugged, the house sighed and I finally reluctantly removed all the pieces of paper form the fireplace.