Is the Art of Thought Dying?

:Pooh tweet, pooh tweet" - Kurt Vonnegut Bird

There is a theory of human mind that suggests that thinking  is really just a conversation in which we explore our ideas about the world with others.

We are all aware of our thinking when we converse with other people, but we seldom give much thought  to the  conversations we conduct in our minds. Conversations  with imagined “others” are going on in our heads all the time. When we read a book or read passed a headline in the newspaper, we are having a nice chat with the authors. Sometimes we argue with imaginary images of friends or family and other times we converse with others imagined out of thin air—day dreaming our way to new insights.

We could just as well have our chats with our imaginary friends right out loud, but then someone would make us take lithium pills.

When I think about conversation, I think of a back and forth process in which we try out our ideas, listen to the reactions of real and imagined others, and then rethink again and again. The process of thinking is more than just stating what we think we know, it’s a process of reformulating what we know in new ways. Our thought-conversations are a way for creating new knowledge.

When I get to thinking about the nature of conversation in our culture it seems to me that our conversations are growing shorter and shorter. Are we gradually shrinking into a “sound bite” approach to conversation? More and more, its seems that we state our ideas and that’s that. No replies required. No replies welcomed. Rather than converse, we “Tweet” like little birds.

I’ve been thinking, could the rise of tweeting be signaling the demise of thought?