When making really good coffee, we need to let it bloom. This means giving the grounds time to thoroughly develop after the first small pour of water, letting them build greater complexity and flavor before we pour the rest and get the final cup.
Fine wines need time to bloom. It is not called blooming, but we all know that the best wines are not bottled that way. Their quality, depth, and refinement develop over many years spent sitting quietly on a shelf in the cellar. And still further after being poured, where the wine enjoys yet another period of quiet waiting time before reaching its fullest expression.
Ideas, too, need time to bloom. Some take longer than wine. Almost all take longer than coffee. A mind should let its ideas grow, and grow slowly. Why? So that we can make better choices. So that we can know ourselves better. So that we can come to complex insights that take a long time to work through.
But we have stopped giving our ideas any time at all. Instead, when we have an idea, or rather, the first bud of one, we clip it off before it has had a chance to grow. A fully bloomed idea is a beautiful thing, so why would we ever cut it down? And how? By shifting our attention from it. By rushing to the next thing our monkey minds tell us we should be doing instead. The branch breaks, the bloom withers. We hardly remember anything was ever there.
It is worse than ever, now.
Mind wandering, quiet thinking, free associating—all these forms of ruminative thought have become critically endangered by the attention-stealing powers of the technology around us. Particularly our phones. Particularly our phones, because large companies make hundreds of billions of dollars every year through commoditizing nearly everything we look at on them. These companies get paid based on how long we look. ”Show me the incentive, I’ll show you the outcome.” This should be obvious. It is obvious. A modern tautology. Is it not obscene that we all keep looking anyway?
Since we’re either looking, or thinking about looking, at our phones or streaming services or Microsoft Teams or whatever other thing beckons us with a little red dot and a new slot machine pull, we are never in the right headspace to think. How can we form a complete thought when, ”I wonder what’s on my phone,” intrudes on it? Every single time? Instead of giving our coffee time to bloom, our wine time to age, we are taking one sip and then sprinting full-tilt away from it. Did it taste like anything? We can’t remember.
There is no life without a mind that considers it. When our minds are too busy considering only the next thing, it’s almost as if we don’t exist anymore. It is not important to the attention economy that we exist. It is only important that we look.
This is not only harmful, it is also ugly. It is making us stupid and less interesting. Have you noticed how few people you know read books anymore? (I am skeptical of audiobooks—these invite multitasking, which means not paying that much attention to any one thing at a time.) When was the last time you didn’t have to check your phone before answering the question, “What are you listening to these days?” The last time you had an interesting, weird query, did you sit down and try to reason forward to what the answer could be, finding joy in the act of pondering and prodding, maybe eventually coming to an answer—or did you just use your phone to find out? Googling everything, feeding everything into ChatGPT, and offloading the life-affirming practice of coming to our own conclusions is making us into a dull mass of unthinking algorithmic pulp. We are spoiling all our own surprises. We are all thinking the same things. It is a shame.
If any of this resonates with you: put your phone in a drawer. Really. Physically go and do this. Then, go for a long, long, long walk. And do so every day until you remember what it is like to be yourself. To feel your own blooming.
Related works:Published April 27, 2024