Ryan's Pro-Metis Process

So here's the deal: I'm in Thessaloniki by myself, and unlike Athens, this is not a town of English speakers, hostels, or any of the other ways to conveniently be social.

At first I took this to be a negative, but the result is that I've spent the past two days in almost total personal silence. The world is very loud around me, but I'm just not talking because I have nothing to say, nor anyone to talk with.

I've filled the time thinking, which is actually something I used to do much more frequently. Growing up I would spend hours thinking about questions of logic, morality, strategy, and probably just as much time if not more fabricating fictions to imaginary epics, etc.

What occurred to me this afternoon is that whereas formely I constructed my opinions and understanding of the world through an interior monologue, in recent years I have largely stopped such focused thinking, and instead rely on dialogues with others to help me not only state my opinions, but also consider other points and adapt my ideas.

But I think Dialogue, for all its value of exposure to other perspectives, may not be the best way to advance or improve our opinions. How many of us have walked away from a conversation convinced that the other side was right afterall? I don't think our opinions are necessarily that static, just that dialogue doesn't always serve the greater understanding because our goal is more often to present our ideas as best we can, rather than really consider all the factors presented by both sides.

Anyway, it's been good to have some thinking time, both here and in Athens. As a result, I've had a lot of thoughts that I'd like to put into this blog, most of them quite specific to an experience I've had over the past week. It's difficult to coalesce all of it in a chronological manner, and even more difficult to be brief enough to be worth reading, but I'm going to try.

The following posts should sum up my thoughts and (largely interior) adventures over the past few days. Read if you want, please skip if they get too detailed or ridiculous.

Weber (on the Lamb)