No.228496
Thesis:
Engagement with structurally advanced texts and excellent rhetoric trains and temporarily optimises the mind into recurring modes of organization, attention, abstraction, and inference; repeated exposure can temporarily or semi-durably bias cognition toward those modes independently of propositional content.
Or in simpler terms, in the same way that algebra & calculus trains the mind towards logical and methodical thought in the long term, I believe it's possible for works of illustration, music and literature to do so in the short term. If this is true, then it's advantageous to catalogue such art-efacts and optimise exposure to them.
I'm not talking about the first order; "no duh, I read something that told/reminded me of facts and now they're at the front of my attention" or involuntary emotional responses, I'm talking about the temporary mental structure. Meditation or such like, if it works, seems to work by selecting for facts and details, voluntarily emphasising inputs to get desired outputs. It should notionally be possible then, to exercise the mind in such a way that one or more patterns of thought and emphasis can be either cold stored, or reliably reconstructed with inputs on demand. I think genius lies in being able to do this at will and not rely on outside props, but i'm not a genius.
The inspiration for this idea came from reading Robert Carlyle in the morning and consequently having a very organised and effective day at work, but I've noticed it much earlier in the second and third novel of Kai Lung. In the later case, the pleasant but none-the-less non-trivial effort of very complex English usually leaves me in a "well spoken" state for quite some time. I originally put this down to simple mimicry but perhaps there's more to it.
Thoughts? Examples of useful material?
If this is true, consider the darker side - that it's possible to artificially construct and reinforce dysfunctional frames of mind, not just overloading the memory and attention with noise and conflict, but actually implant a structure of thought - at scale. If this was so, how well does it explain modernity.