Article Discussion: "Thinking as a Hobby" by William Golding

[chrispalasz]

Okay, I normally don't post in this category to respect boundaries, since I'm a theist. In this case, however, I'm posting as a rare exception. This seems to be the most appropriate category for this article discussion - so here it is. In this category, I'll be limiting my posts to this thread, and I hope nobody minds. Cheers~

Last week, my job paid Dr. Lilith Haynes, Director of Harvard's Institute for English Language Programs, to come to Korea for a week and train some teachers to receive a special certification so we can teach a class "approved by Harvard". I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in the training. It was 2-6pm M-F... we read a couple ESL books and a BUNCH of articles.

One of those articles reminded me of some people on this forum and I thought it'd be a good one to discuss. I found the article online and posted it below, then asked some questions.

If you decide to participate in this discussion, PLEASE read the entire article!

"Thinking as a Hobby"
by William Golding

While I was still a boy, I came to the conclusion that there were three grades of thinking; and since I was later to claim thinking as my hobby, I came to an even stranger conclusion - namely, that I myself could not think at all.

I must have been an unsatisfactory child for grownups to deal with. I remember how incomprehensible they appeared to me at first, but not, of course, how I appeared to them.

It was the headmaster of my grammar school who first brought the subject of thinking before me - though neither in the way, nor with the result he intended. He had some statuettes in his study. They stood on a high cupboard behind his desk. One was a lady wearing nothing but a bath towel. She seemed frozen in an eternal panic lest the bath towel slip down any farther, and since she had no arms, she was in an unfortunate position to pull the towel up again. Next to her, crouched the statuette of a leopard, ready to spring down at the top drawer of a filing cabinet labeled A-AH. My innocence interpreted this as the victim's last, despairing cry. Beyond the leopard was a naked, muscular gentleman, who sat, looking down, with his chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee. He seemed utterly miserable.

Some time later, I learned about these statuettes. The headmaster had placed them where they would face delinquent children, because they symbolized to him the whole of life.

The naked lady was the Venus of Milo. She was Love. She was not worried about the towel. She was just busy being beautiful. The leopard was Nature, and he was being natural. The naked, muscular gentleman was not miserable. He was Rodin's Thinker, an image of pure thought. It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

I had better explain that I was a frequent visitor to the headmaster's study, because of the latest thing I had done or left undone. As we now say, I was not integrated. I was, if anything, disintegrated; and I was puzzled. Grownups never made sense. Whenever I found myself in a penal position before the headmaster's desk, with the statuettes glimmering whitely above him, I would sink my head, clasp my hands behind my back, and writhe one shoe over the other.

The headmaster would look opaquely at me through flashing spectacles. "What are we going to do with you?"

Well, what were they going to do with me? I would writhe my shoe some more and stare down at the worn rug.

"Look up, boy! Can't you look up?"

Then I would look at the cupboard, where the naked lady was frozen in her panic and the muscular gentleman contemplated the hindquarters of the leopard in endless gloom. I had nothing to say to the headmaster. His spectacles caught the light so that you could see nothing human behind them. There was no possibility of communication.

"Don't you ever think at all?"

No, I didn't think, wasn't thinking, couldn't think - I was simply waiting in anguish for the interview to stop.

"Then you'd better learn - hadn't you?"

On one occasion the headmaster leaped to his feet, reached up and plonked Rodin's masterpiece on the desk before me.

"That's what a man looks like when he's really thinking."

I surveyed the gentleman without interest or comprehension.

"Go back to your class."

Clearly there was something missing in me. Nature had endowed the rest of the human race with a sixth sense and left me out. This must be so, I mused, on my way back to the class, since whether I had broken a window, or failed to remember Boyle's Law, or been late for school, my teachers produced me one, adult answer: "Why can't you think?"

As I saw the case, I had broken the window because I had tried to hit Jack Arney with a cricket ball and missed him; I could not remember Boyle's Law because I had never bothered to learn it; and I was late for school because I preferred looking over the bridge into the river. In fact, I was wicked. Were my teachers, perhaps, so good that they could not understand the depths of my depravity? Were they clear, untormented people who could direct their every action by this mysterious business of thinking? The whole thing was incomprehensible. In my earlier years, I found even the statuette of the Thinker confusing. I did not believe any of my teachers were naked, ever. Like someone born deaf, but bitterly determined to find out about sound, I watched my teachers to find out about thought.

There was Mr. Houghton. He was always telling me to think. With a modest satisfaction, he would tell that he had thought a bit himself. Then why did he spend so much time drinking? Or was there more sense in drinking than there appeared to be? But if not, and if drinking were in fact ruinous to health - and Mr. Houghton was ruined, there was no doubt about that - why was he always talking about the clean life and the virtues of fresh air? He would spread his arms wide with the action of a man who habitually spent his time striding along mountain ridges.

"Open air does me good, boys - I know it!"

Sometimes, exalted by his own oratory, he would leap from his desk and hustle us outside into a hideous wind.

"Now, boys! Deep breaths! Feel it right down inside you - huge draughts of God's good air!"

He would stand before us, rejoicing in his perfect health, an open-air man. He would put his hands on his waist and take a tremendous breath. You could hear the wind trapped in the cavern of his chest and struggling with all the unnatural impediments. His body would reel with shock and his ruined face go white at the unaccustomed visitation. He would stagger back to his desk and collapse there, useless for the rest of the morning. Mr. Houghton was given to high-minded monologues about the good life, sexless and full of duty. Yet in the middle of one of these monologues, if a girl passed the window, tapping along on her neat little feet, he would interrupt his discourse, his neck would turn of itself and he would watch her out of sight. In this instance, he seemed to me ruled not
by thought but by an invisible and irresistible spring in his nape.

His neck was an object of great interest to me. Normally it bulged a bit over his collar. But Mr. Houghton had fought in the First World War alongside both Americans and French, and had come - by who knows what illogic? - to a settled detestation of both countries. If either country happened to be prominent in current affairs, no argument could make Mr. Houghton think well of it. He would bang the desk, his neck would bulge still further and go red. "You can say what you like," he would cry, "but I've thought about this - and I know what I think!"

Mr. Houghton thought with his neck.

There was Miss. Parsons. She assured us that her dearest wish was our welfare, but I knew even then, with the mysterious clairvoyance of childhood, that what she wanted most was the husband she never got. There was Mr. Hands - and so on.

I have dealt at length with my teachers because this was my introduction to the nature of what is commonly called thought. Through them I discovered that thought is often full of unconscious prejudice, ignorance, and hypocrisy. It will lecture on disinterested purity while its neck is being remorselessly twisted toward a skirt. Technically, it is about as proficient as most businessmen's golf, as honest as most politician's intentions, or – to come near my own preoccupation - as coherent as most books that get written. It is what I came to call grade-three thinking, though more properly, it is feeling, rather than thought.

True, often there is a kind of innocence in prejudices, but in those days I viewed grade-three thinking with an intolerant contempt and an incautious mockery. I delighted to confront a pious lady who hated the Germans with the proposition that we should love our enemies. She taught me a great truth in dealing with grade-three thinkers; because of her, I no longer dismiss lightly a mental process which for nine-tenths of the population is the nearest they will ever get to thought. They have immense solidarity. We had better respect them, for we are outnumbered and surrounded. A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

Grade-two thinking is the detection of contradictions. I reached grade two when I trapped the poor, pious lady. Grade-two thinkers do not stampede easily, though often they fall into the other fault and lag behind. Grade-two thinking is a withdrawal, with eyes and ears open. It became my hobby and brought satisfaction and loneliness in either hand. For grade-two thinking destroys without having the power to create. It set me watching the crowds cheering His Majesty the King and asking myself what all the fuss was about, without giving me anything positive to put in the place of that heady patriotism. But there were compensations. To hear people justify their habit of hunting foxes and tearing them to pieces by claiming that the foxes like it. To her our Prime Minister talk about the great benefit we conferred on India by jailing people like Pandit Nehru and Gandhi. To hear American politicians talk about peace in one sentence and refuse to join the League of Nations in the next. Yes, there were moments of delight. But I was growing toward adolescence and had to admit that Mr. Houghton was not the only one with an irresistible spring in his neck. I, too, felt the compulsive hand of nature and began to find that pointing out contradiction could be costly as well as fun.

There was Ruth, for example, a serious and attractive girl. I was an atheist at the time. Grade-two thinking is a menace to religion and knocks down sects like skittles. I put myself in a position to be converted by her with an hypocrisy worthy of grade three. She was a Methodist - or at least, her parents were, and Ruth had to follow suit. But, alas, instead of relying on the Holy Spirit to convert me, Ruth was foolish enough to open her pretty mouth in argument. She claimed that the Bible (King James Version) was literally inspired. I countered by saying that the Catholics believed in the literal inspiration of Saint Jerome's Vulgate, and the two books were different. Argument flagged.

At last she remarked that there were an awful lot of Methodists and they couldn't be wrong, could they - not all those millions? That was too easy, said I restively (for the nearer you were to Ruth, the nicer she was to be near to) since there were more Roman Catholics than Methodists anyway; and they couldn't be wrong, could they - not all those hundreds of millions? An awful flicker of doubt appeared in her eyes. I slid my arm round her waist and murmured breathlessly that if we were counting heads, the Buddhists were the boys for my money. But Ruth has really wanted to do me good, because I was so nice. The combination of my arm and those countless Buddhists was too much for her. That night her father visited my father and left, red-cheeked and indignant. I was given the third degree to find out what had happened. It was lucky we were both of us only fourteen. I lost Ruth and gained an undeserved reputation as a potential libertine. So grade-two thinking could be dangerous. It was in this knowledge, at the age of fifteen, that I remember making a comment from the heights of grade two, on the limitations of grade three.

One evening I found myself alone in the school hall, preparing it for a party. The door of the headmaster's study was open. I went in. The headmaster had ceased to thump Rodin's Thinker down on the desk as an example to the young. Perhaps he had not found any more candidates, but the statuettes were still there, glimmering and gathering dust on top of the cupboard. I stood on a chair and rearranged them. I stood Venus in her bathtowel on the filing cabinet, so that now the top drawer caught its breath in a gasp of sexy excitement. "A-ah!" The portentous Thinker I placed on the edge of the cupboard so that he looked down at the bath towel and waited for it to slip.

Grade-two thinking, though it filled life with fun and excitement, did not make for content. To find out the deficiencies of our elders bolsters the young ego but does not make for personal security. I found that grade two was not only the power to point out contradictions. It took the swimmer some distance from the shore and left him there, out of his depth. I decided that Pontius Pilate was a typical grade-two thinker. "What is truth?" he said, a very common grade two thought, but one that is used always as the end of an argument instead of the beginning. There is still a higher grade of thought which says, "What is truth?" and sets out to find it.

But these grade-one thinkers were few and far between. They did not visit my grammar school in the flesh though they were there in books. I aspired to them partly because I was ambitious and partly because I now saw my hobby as an unsatisfactory thing if it went no further. If you set out to climb a mountain, however high you climb, you have failed if you cannot reach the top.

I did meet an undeniably grade one thinker in my first year at Oxford. I was looking over a small bridge in Magdalen Deer Park, and a tiny mustached and hatted figure came and stood by my side. He was a German who had just fled from the Nazis to Oxford as a temporary refuge. His name was Einstein.

But Professor Einstein knew no English at that time and I knew only two words of German. I beamed at him, trying wordlessly to convey by my bearing all the affection and respect that the English felt for him. It is possible - and I have to make the admission - that I felt here were two grade-one thinkers standing side by side; yet I doubt if my face conveyed more than a formless awe. I would have given my Greek and Latin and French and a good slice of my English for enough German to communicate. But we were divided; he was as inscrutable as my headmaster. For perhaps five minutes we stood together on the bridge, undeniable grade-one thinker and breathless aspirant. With true greatness, Professor Einstein realized that any contact was better than none. He pointed to a trout wavering in midstream.

He spoke: "Fisch."

My brain reeled. Here I was, mingling with the great, and yet helpless as the veriest grade-three thinker. Desperately I sought for some sign by which I might convey that I, too, revered pure reason. I nodded vehemently. In a brilliant flash I used up half of my German vocabulary. "Fisch. Ja. Ja."

For perhaps another five minutes we stood side by side. Then Professor Einstein, his whole figure still conveying good will and amiability, drifted away out of sight.

I, too, would be a grade-one thinker. I was irrelevant at the best of times. Political and religious systems, social customs, loyalties and traditions, they all came tumbling down like so many rotten apples off a tree. This was a fine hobby and a sensible substitute for cricket, since you could play it all the year round. I came up in the end with what must always remain the justification for grade-one thinking, its sign, seal, and charter. I devised a coherent system for living. It was a moral system, which was wholly logical. Of course, as I readily admitted, conversion of the world to my way of thinking might be difficult, since my system did away with a number of trifles, such as big business, centralized government, armies, marriage...

It was Ruth all over again. I had some very good friends who stood by me, and still do. But my acquaintances vanished, taking the girls with them. Young women seemed oddly contented with the world as it was. They valued the meaningless ceremony with a ring. Young men, while willing to concede the chaining sordidness of marriage, were hesitant about abandoning the organizations which they hoped would give them a career. A young man on the first rung of the Royal Navy, while perfectly agreeable to doing away with big business and marriage, got as red-necked as Mr. Houghton when I proposed a world without any battleships in it.

Had the game gone too far? Was it a game any longer? In those prewar days, I stood to lose a great deal, for the sake of a hobby.

Now you are expecting me to describe how I saw the folly of my ways and came back to the warm nest, where prejudices are so often called loyalties, where pointless actions are hallowed into custom by repetition, where we are content to say we think when all we do is feel.

But you would be wrong. I dropped my hobby and turned professional.

If I were to go back to the headmaster's study and find the dusty statuettes still there, I would arrange them differently. I would dust Venus and put her aside, for I have come to love her and know her for the fair thing she is. But I would put the Thinker, sunk in his desperate thought, where there were shadows before him - and at his back, I would put the leopard, crouched and ready to spring.

Discussion Questions:

1. What parts of the article particularly stuck out to you in some way?

2. What quotes from the article do you feel best characterize Golding's three levels of Thinkers? Or, if you'd like, please summerize Golding's perspective on each of the three levels of Thinkers.

3. Which level of Thinker would you characterize yourself as and why?

4. Have you ever met a level 1 Thinker? Who was it? What indicates they were level 1, as defined by Golding?

5. What do you interpret is the meaning of the last paragraph in the article?

6. What was your favorite quote from the article?

7. If there were any parts you don't like or don't agree with, what are they?

8. Why do you think Golding wrote the article? Is there a deeper meaning, and if so, what is it? What should the reader take from the article?

[dr210077]

1. What parts of the article particularly stuck out to you in some way?

Wordy nonsense. The whole is so much less than it aspires to be, both contextually and factually.

2. What quotes from the article do you feel best characterize Golding's three levels of Thinkers? Or, if you'd like, please summerize Golding's perspective on each of the three levels of Thinkers

See up there ^^^

3. 3. Which level of Thinker would you characterize yourself as and why?

Good try son, but REAL FREE-THINKERS don't think about how great they are, rather they yearn to be shown wrong. It is only the narcissistic self-authenticating asshats that rate themselves.

I may or may not respond to the rest of this post, as time allows.

[chrispalasz]

1. What parts of the article particularly stuck out to you in some way?

Wordy nonsense. The whole is so much less than it aspires to be, both contextually and factually.

2. What quotes from the article do you feel best characterize Golding's three levels of Thinkers? Or, if you'd like, please summerize Golding's perspective on each of the three levels of Thinkers

See up there ^^^

3. 3. Which level of Thinker would you characterize yourself as and why?

Good try son, but REAL FREE-THINKERS don't think about how great they are, rather they yearn to be shown wrong. It is only the narcissistic self-authenticating asshats that rate themselves.

I may or may not respond to the rest of this post, as time allows.

LOL - It's a bit ironic. I think, according to the article, your comment shows you to be a level 2 thinker. I'm not drawing any conclusions about you or this article... just applying ideas from the article to your post. You were a critic from the get-go, it seems. Reading and seeking to destroy... without regard for solutions to this wordiness or self-authentication.

I'll post my full answers to my own question as soon~

Edit: By the way - thanks for the response!

[dr210077]

I think, according to the article, your comment shows you to be a level 2 thinker. I'm not drawing any conclusions about you or this article... just applying ideas from the article to your post.

This is the reason I called you on this post, you wanted to try to pigeonhole people not because people can be pigeonholed, but rather because you feel pigeonholed yourself. You have also shown singlehandedly, why the "Free-thinkers" section of the forum really needs to be for non-believers. Only believers ask loaded questions or draw loaded answers.

[chrispalasz]

I think, according to the article, your comment shows you to be a level 2 thinker. I'm not drawing any conclusions about you or this article... just applying ideas from the article to your post.

This is the reason I called you on this post, you wanted to try to pigeonhole people not because people can be pigeonholed, but rather because you feel pigeonholed yourself. You have also shown singlehandedly, why the "Free-thinkers" section of the forum really needs to be for non-believers. Only believers ask loaded questions or draw loaded answers.

Actually, I think all you've done here is show why believers are NEEDED in the Free-Thinkers section. I didn't load anything. This thread is asking for an academic critique of this article, while you willy-nilly chose 3 of the many questions that were asked and tried deconstructing the author rather than the content. I'm also going to take a stab in the dark and guess that you only read it once, making your comments even more taboo and separated from authentic analysis.

Your comment about "only believers" asking "loaded questions" to "draw loaded answers" is just flat out false. Honestly, are you serious? Because if I didn't know better, this would really make me wonder if you even talk to non-believers or read their comments.

And lastly, what does this thread have to do with being a believer? Believers can be critical and skeptical free thinkers (free thinker in the sense that we think freely to consider all possible, probable, likely, or otherwise - answers - unrestricted). This has nothing to do with God. It only has everything to do with concepts and ideas that are at odds with you. Perhaps this section is just your way of avoiding those things? Then there's nothing stopping you from avoiding this exception of a thread.

Edit: And here starts where you, once again, seem keen on derailing another thread that I had aspirations for being an interesting and academic discussion.

[dr210077]

Your comment about "only believers" asking "loaded questions" to "draw loaded answers" is just flat out false

I don't think you fully understand. You see when I made the original reply I intentionally elicited a response from you. Your response or rather, its content, betrayed your real intentions. See VVV for what I mean.

I think, according to the article, your comment shows you to be a level 2 thinker. I'm not drawing any conclusions about you or this article... just applying ideas from the article to your post.

As for the article itself, it is no more than a treatise of one man's insecurities, in which he comforts himself by regaling his audience with tales of Einstein and his own boyish arrogance. To be honest I would be more interested in his age when he wrote this, as it sounds like an old man looking back over his life and justifying and validating it. It is a well written piece, but it holds no value as a method of pigeonholing people. In fact it can only really be used as an insight into its author's mind.

[willow]

--bump--
anyone want to take a stab at these without the spat between dr and A theist? for the record though I think your first post Dr is uncharitable.

1. two of the things that stuck out to me the most were firstly that the 3 levels of thinking parallel those found in many ancient mysteries religions in Europe, and many many other mythologies (maiden, mother, crone or magician, sorcerer, sage) and secondly how the three statues of venus, the thinker and the leopard symbolize the 3 levels of thought as well.

2. level 3 is natual or animalistic thought, inherant in everyone and is the level of thought we generally assume that everyone else is using the one associated with the masses, or fans of Sarah Palin. Its generally emotionally driven and reactive and can in many senses be called "primal" represented by the statue of the leopard

level 2 thinking is openly critical and perhaps borderline nihilistic. its perhaps the type of thinking represented by the Holden Caulfields of the world or maybe the Bazarovs. The idea that it is a level of thought that tares apart is interesting, generally though the second level of thought is characterized as seeing through or past seeing the symbols and metaphors to understanding what those symbols and metaphors are supposed to mean.

forgive my metaphor but the second level is realizing that there are two women in this picture, a young woman and an old. It all depends on perspective. first level thinking sees only the young woman. represented by Venus

level 1 thought is supposed to represent "true understanding" or wisdom. real meaningful thought, thought which we generally associate with those that produce great things, like Einstein. They persue knowledge from the unknown rather then tred the thoughts of others as is so often the case for second level thinkers, myself included. represnted by The thinker

Another way I have seen it put is lvl 3 sees allegories as true tales. lvl 2 sees them as teaching tales with a secondary meaning, which may or may not be true. lvl 1 understands the allegories for what they are and can create new allegories.

the people lvl 3, the priests lvl 2, the people who edit the book lvl 1.

Incidently A_theist, a literal belief in religion is generally a sign of 3rd level thinking and the abandonment of literalism (not neccessarily of belief) was a sign of abandoning level 3 thinking for level 2. I point no fingures, rather that is how its generally represented when I encounter this kind of system.

3. This is where I become pretentious and say 1 of course. But then, I'm not the self agrandizing type. I would say to be perfectly honest somewhere between 2 and 1, but I wouldnt want to wager on exactly where. To reach the first level is to understand and embody Socrates meaning when he says "I know that I know nothing" or perhaps to leave Plato's cave and strike upon Aristotles golden mean. All I know is that I seek anwsers to questions that interest me and I could very well claim "Thinking" as my hobby.

4. hmm possibly but if I have the event escapes me. I have read the words of many though.

5. This is simple, he is ordering and arranging the "meanings" in his life. He moves the Thinker to a place where there is darkness to ponder, the shadows represent the unknown rather then that which is illuminated and easy to see. The Thinker moves from second level thought perhaps to 1st?

Moving the Leopard behind the Thinker represents the natural or emotional level of thought the third level, ready to spring on the Thinker because as Golding states the Leopard reacts violently when the ground it stands on is shaken. Its placed to the rear either because the 3rd level is "behind" the Thinker, or more I think, as an "unknown threat"

Venus is moved dusted and moved to the side, perhaps to show it is not forgotten yet is placed away from the Thinker removing distractions. It is perhaps being "left out to sea" as well

6.

Grade-two thinking, though it filled life with fun and excitement, did not make for content. To find out the deficiencies of our elders bolsters the young ego but does not make for personal security.

Grade-two thinkers do not stampede easily, though often they fall into the other fault and lag behind. Grade-two thinking is a withdrawal, with eyes and ears open. It became my hobby and brought satisfaction and loneliness in either hand.

7. meh

8. Hmmm, I would be interested to know if these statues ever existed, or the meeting with Einstein ever happened... a sign of 1st level thinking?