It has regularly been a theme of this blog that people stop thinking after age 23. They become like cast concrete or a hard-boiled egg. This happens to 993 people out of 1000. I have a near orgasm anytime I meet one of the remaining seven out of the thousand.
There is no mystery in my definition of being able to think. Thinking is not choosing what color shoes to wear nor which employee to promote. Those are choices made with cookie cutters applied to an existing dough of one’s frozen world view.
Thinking is merging two separate categories of thought.
The question I was asked the other day was: ‘is there anything that can be offered to or provided for people before they are 23 to allow them to be able to think in later life?’.
The subject came up around the movie Lucy and the theme that she was able to use the 90% of her brain that others apparently don't use. The 10% brain usage metaphor makes no sense to me. I was never brighter than many of the other early entrants to the University of Chicago when I arrived at age 15. Over time, I found that I continued thinking and many of the people around me didn't.
I actually don't have the answer. I also looked at my own history and cannot find a unique personal source.
I had a great deal of experience before age 23, including a year in Israel, a year in industrial production, a few months on a kibbutz and the extraordinary intellectual milieu of the University of Chicago. Other people have had similar experiences and still became hard-boiled at age 23.
Maybe I will have an explanation before I die. Maybe.