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Boundaries and thinking

When do we think most efficiently? A joke with one of my managers at work today got me started on this (thanks, VL). My guess is that boundaries, such as an office with all the objects and activities it involves, focus thinking. That is why we institutionalize great ideas. And when one needs an "open" mind, they tend to leave the confined set of objects and activities in order to "think outside the box". In short, leaving boundaries helps thinking.

But what about other, bigger boundaries. Such as our households, education systems and nation states? Surely, we come to point where we can't actually leave because we've been brought up in those boundaries. To step outside those would be to go insane, to lose touch of what we know and hold as truth.

So, can we ever think outside boundaries?

I believe we can, and this is what makes religion and/or metaphysics interesting. There are concepts in religious values, ethics and morals that cannot be described in words (see a previous post on Wittgenstein here), but they exist in thought. The struggle we face is to bring these thoughts into the world through communication with one another in a way that is as close to the truth of the thought as possible.

Perhaps this means we while we can think efficiently in different spaces, will never speak our thoughts with 100% efficiency. 

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