Sub-optimal thinking

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Hmm, have been thinking about thinking since sometime (the after-effect of a disastrous sleepless night followed by a dusastrous class maybe :-)) and as ususal I'm currently totally in tangles (that's the first step, I generally manage to untangle the tangles in due course, but sometimes my heart goes out for people who're involved with me during my tangled phase, how much they have to suffer, especially when I decide to share and argue my tangles out with them :-D)

When you're thinking (any topic, any field), how can you limit yourself to a boundary that's artificial and be happy with the solution. I mean you have to get to the extreme first... no constraints, no boundaries, no conditions...call it the ideal solution, the philosophical solution, the reasoning extreme...whatever you're comfortable with. Then impose the limits and constraints of your frame of reference, and you might get a solution which will satisfy you.

But most of us have imposed the conditions and constraints a-priori (A can't stand maths, so he'll explore only upto the non-mathematical realms; B can't be dishonest, so he'll explore only in the honest range; C can't stand philosophy, so he'll explore only in the non-philosophical range...come on it's reasoning, just reasoning...all these terms are human inventions, and how I wish they hadn't been invented...all these cups to hold the same wine and we're lost in the cups) So we're working happy with hopelessly sub-optimal solutions. I'm not saying you have to be dishonest or find philosophy in everything or so on.
What I'm saying is I'll reject Consciously, and conscious rejection can't happen till I know or explore that which I'm going to reject.

But sub-optimality works...you see it, don't you?
That most of us lead our lives on external judgements (did those judges give me the first prize, did my professor give me the highest marks, did my boss think my work as good...). So it's sub-optimality that is rewarded in the normal course of things 99% of the times (ok it's an arbit % value, I don't know the real figure :-)).

One way to break this cycle of sub-optimality is to create a solution so perfect, so beautiful, that the members in the sub-optimal system realise the perfection of it and decide by themselves to change. Einstein's relativity was such an acme, so was Tagore's prose and poetry in Bengali literature, and so was Satyajit Ray's cinematic paradigm for Indian cinema.

But most of us - with our reward system surrendered to external entities - will hopelessly look for the next messaiah to uplift us throughout our life (and till that happens maybe we wouldn't even know that we can be uplifted...lost as we are in this cycle of sub-optimality) .

I'm going to sleep as you work out the tangles :-D