I found that my readings are a great inspiration source for my writings. Last week I have been sick for many days. I hadn’t the head to read. The only think I did was watching TV. Then I got lag in my works and hadn’t much time to read books of blog feeds. It’s why I lacked to write on my blog; it’s why it will be this for another couple of days.

But I found something in this process. My readings are really important in my writing process. It’s where I seem to get a great part of my inspiration. I wanted to write something yesterday but I wasn’t able to focus on anything. I wandered why and I found that I practically always wrote things that come up in my mind when I was reading. It was a revelation and a thing to have in mind: I need to read to write.

I’m a somewhat big reader. I read a book a week, sometimes 2 when I have a reading rage. I read anything. When I read, I think about what I’m reading, but sometimes my eyes read but my mind is somewhere else, musing on something trigged by the reading, in relation or not with it. It’s for this exact reason why reading is at the center of my writings: because it has the power to trigger different ideas in my mind.

Technoratie: [writing] [reading] [ideas] [inspiration]

Writings: the memory of humanity

The memory of humanity has been possible by the creation of writing. Without this revolution, only a weakening or amnesic one would have existed. It took us an instrument to enable us to transmit, generations after generations, the knowledge acquired by every human being. The transmission of his knowledge and his culture is the definition of a collective memory. This collective memory is the tool that helps us to evolve as humans being. Without it our development would had been sporadic and deficient. This foundation that writing is for our collective memory had participated to an exponential evolution of the humanity as we know it.

These writings are for our collective memory what neurons are to our human ones. Humans will read writing archives. Then they will converse with their peers about their content. New ideas will emerge from these sources. The act of conversation and socialization will help the development of these new ideas. Eventually these ideas will be written by their individual authors and published. This specific act will enrich the collective memory. This is how it will change, grow, evolve and adapt.

I see writings as a meta-memory: the memory of collectivity. But they are part of a whole system of memories. This system start with the DNA: the primal memory of the Nature. Then we have brain’s neurons: the primal memory of many living creatures. Eventually we created something called writings: the primal memory of our societies.

Writings are part of a global memory system. It’s based upon them. What his fantastic is that this memory system is the foundation of other systems that help us to archives our collective memory. One of the most recent, and probably the bigger system, that is based upon writing is the Internet. This system has the potential to revolutionize the concept of the collective memory.

Writing is the thing that makes us what we are now: humans being of the 21 century.

Technoratie: [writing] [memory] [dna] [neurons] [internet]

“When do you do your best thinking? Come on. I mean really put thought into an issue, problem, opportunity, strategy, product line, competitor that you or your business is facing?”

I like this question asked by Todd.

Everybody have their own answer to this question. The one I’ll present is the one I’m normally using. It’s a method that I tested and developed over time to cope with the way my mind work.

Okay, I face a problem, an issue, an opportunity, what do I do?

First, I learn about it. I try to understand it as well as I can with the resources I have. I try to learn the true nature of the thing. Without this knowledge, I couldn’t be able to do anything.

Sometimes, I’ll find the solution only by doing this. In this case, I’ll be really happy and will spend my saved time to drink to it. The problem is that resolving an issue only by doing this is rare.

If I don’t come up with a solution after hard work and explorations, I stop to think about it. I start to work on another non-related thing; I do something manual: doing sport, going outside, etc.

I have two goals by doing this.

The first one is to free my mind.

The second one is to stimulate it with new external stimulus. I do this in hope to create new connections in my brain; to see, unconsciously, the thing with another point of view.

If I’m lucky, within a day, a week or a month a hint will show up in my mind: a track to follow to resolve my given problem. My unconsciousness has then talked.

Its how I generally work: I feed my unconsciousness with the given problem then I let him think about it, waiting for a hint.

What I learned while developing this method? Patience and confidence. I needed to develop a confidence in my preliminary works and searching. I had to have the confidence that I done the good things to come up with a solution. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it but I knew I was on the good way. So I used my thinking method to try to come up with a solution. Then I needed to develop my patience to wait to see the results. Without any of these two things, the method would be useless.

Technoratie: [Mind] [think] [problem] [issue] [strategy]

It was raining outside. I was looking at the depressiveness of the day. The snow was vanishing with the rain. The teacher was talking about Heraclites, Socrates and Plato. A philosophy class–the perfect place where to muse.

What would I do in the future? What he look like? What do I have to do to try to enhance it? All choices were of importance at that time. I was emerging from my childhood to enter in my adulthood. Since that time, all choices I take has a repercussion on my future.

I was musing on these questions about my future. I was not in the mood to continue my studies for another 4 or 5 years. I had a flash: I wanted to stop them right now to see another part of the world. It’s exactly what I done. I got a summer job and gone to Europe the next autumn. I wanted to see the old continent.

I saw it. I have been to all main capitals of Europe. I was expecting something exceptional. I saw exceptional buildings, houses, parks and museums. Yeah they were exceptional, but they were only buildings, houses, parks and museums.

I was searching for something that I wasn’t able to explain what it was. It was not spiritual. It was a vague idea; something that I wasn’t able to focus on. I was wandering everywhere. I wasn’t taking attention to buildings anymore; it was not what I was searching for.

I was trying to understand what I was doing there; what sent me there. I had lost interest in buildings and architecture but I found interest in people. I talked to them, I mused with them. We talked about their countries and families. I tried to understand them for what they were. I found friends.

I found people. It’s what I always found in my trips. It’s the focal point of all of them. Now, what motivates me to go to a specific place is the curiosity I have to understand the people that live in this place. I want to know their culture; I want to understand it; I want to muse about it. To reach this goal, I need to talk to these people. I need to live with them. Buildings don’t talk; people do.

It’s why I done 12000km of bus. Because the focal point of my trip was in it: talking to people that came from around the world. It was my mobile house; a place where I invited people to talk; a place where I slept.

Do I found what I was searching for? No. Peoples aren’t the thing I was searching for? I don’t know. Will I found it? I hope so. The only thing that I suspect is that I was searching for something at 5000km of my home when this thing could be just there.

people trip Europe life culture