The Shape of the World Thinking About Thinking by Balaji Prasad “A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.”
- Mark Twain There are circles and squares, and triangles and rectangles, and such, in the world we know. Or are there? Is it possible that the strange shapes that populate our heads are really shapes that we shaped? Maybe there are no such things in the real world that correspond to these shapes? Maybe our creative minds spin a parallel universe that aspires to turn with the world as the world turns? But never quite manages to? It’s me, not you! The world is dogmatic! It has a mind of its own, and spins where it spins, seemingly unmindful and uncaring about the poor mind that observes, plaintively hoping that it spins the way that it is “supposed” to spin. But we do much more than hope: we engage with the world with our decisions and actions that we believe will eventually make the South the North, and the North the South. But try as we might, things just seem to happen the way they do. Could it be that the problem lies with us, and not with the world? Could it be that we may even do the very opposite of what we should do, and when things go awry, we simply point to the world and say “You!” when we really ought to be saying “It’s me, not you!” Shaping the shaper If we are able to come to terms with the fact that there are, in fact, two universes – the one inside our Thinking about Thinking continued on page 78
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July 2022
