The Mind

The other day I was sitting in the Salt Lake City public library on one of their tidily modern brown couches, reading Philosophy for Dummies (which is kind of a contradiction in terms) by Tom Morris, and intermittently looking out the massive third-story window at the sun playing down on the cars, on the buildings and on the graceful impressiveness of a skyline that I have come to love over time. I was reading about a school of thought known as Idealism, which Morris summarizes as:

“The view that all that exists are minds… and ideas in minds. According to the idealist, nonmental matter is an illusion projected by our minds. All of the physical universe is just bundles of ideas, a virtual reality, perhaps produced by the mind of God.”

I was forced to pause for a moment, jarred out of my sleepy rumination. Was this something that I could believe? My heart wouldn’t necessarily swallow the concept hook, line and sinker, but it stirred something within me as I looked out at the urban landscape spread out before my eyes. Could it be that this world was not brick and mortar, concrete, aluminum, oxygen, flesh, skin and eyeballs, but just concepts floating through the ether of my - no, not my brain, but my mind?

Well, why not? I certainly wouldn’t be able to prove otherwise, though my intuition wants to put some parameters on the Idealist's doctrine. The truth is, the world as I perceive it probably does exist, but to me, watching through the windows of my senses, it really is nothing but electrical impulses firing through the synapses of my brain.

Whoa. Suddenly my mind has become a world, a universe that is only as small as the things that it sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches and thinks. If the entire world as I perceive it is within me, then why must it seem like such a great task to accomplish anything outside me?

We as human beings - and I include myself in that “we” - often say things like “I wish I was as intelligent as so-and-so” or “I wish I could be morally upstanding and clear minded like the rest of my community.”

My question is - why don’t I, then? I can! The tools are immediately before and within me. My perception of personal weakness is nothing but a dark, cloudy apparition haunting my brain. Should I desire to be an intellectual giant, I can and ought to be pursuing that course this very moment. This very moment. I ought not to wait until there’s a class on the subject that I can attend. I ought not to wait to ask someone who knows. It is just this easy, Cameron: pick up a book on any subject you’ve long desired to learn (you can even get it for free at a library like this one) and read it. And - voila! - you are already well on your way to brilliance.

I believe that what we truly want in the deepest recesses of our hearts is usually good. So if I really want something, I ought to take it! There is, after all, nothing stopping me.

I put down the book and pulled out a piece of paper and began to make a list of what I wanted. It included a number of subjects I wished to learn about - French language, the history of New York City, literary analysis, philosophy and modern musical composition - in addition to a number of other life goals I’ve long held.

Ever since that day I’ve been in a library or a bookstore every available moment. I’ve read all of Tom Morris’s book, nearly finished a book on microeconomics (which is a story in and of itself) and embarked upon a course of French language study. And all because I wanted to.

It amazes me, the way I can turn and look at a light bulb or listen to music or read a book or sink into a comfortable couch or eat a hot dog and suddenly my brain is reaching out its feeble tendrils, touching, viewing, tasting the world, beginning to wrap its roots around the foundations of this universe.