I've been thinking about thoughts today. Where they come from, how they arise, and why they seem like “me.”

Often, a thought will just appear when the mind is still, seemingly at random. After that, more thoughts may follow, vaguely or explicitly connected to the first. When watching the news or engaging with the world, thoughts arise rapidly, but I don't actively think them. If I did, there would have to be a decision beforehand: “Now I will think about this.” That never happens. The thought itself is the decision. So thinking is a happening, not something I do. It’s not caused by “me” as a willful agent. It’s caused by “me” as a thought.

I read a post from someone claiming to be a time traveler who said that people in our era are “ugly,” and that in their time, everyone is beautiful (don’t worry, I’m not going down some time-traveler rabbithole). Soon after, I saw someone on TV and a spontaneous thought popped up: “Ugly.” They weren’t. The thought wasn’t a judgment I made. It was just an echo of what I had recently taken in. The mind mirrored the input, and that was all.

When one stops believing that the “I” exists, it's not the end of the “I.” It’s simply seen as illusory. What’s actually happening, as I’ve intuited before, is a singular movement that appears as many separate movements.

The 18th-century philosopher David Hume once noted that, when he introspected, he could never find a singular, stable self; only a bundle of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings arising in rapid succession. He concluded that the “self” is not an entity, but a stream. If every thought, every sensation, every point of contact with the world were stripped away, the “I” would vanish. So the internal and the external together constitute what we call “I.”

The self is not separate from the world. It is the world, arranged momentarily into a perceiving current.

A river has many small movements, many swirling eddies and currents, but the whole river arises all at once, moment by moment. And so too, I think, does the universe. Perhaps that is why people believe in God, not as a being outside the river, but as the totality of it. Because we are not the river. Nor the ocean. And yet, we are the currents. We are the movement.

It is all one flow. One Being. One God. One… me. I suppose.

So how is any of this useful?

Well… let’s see.

Society, as it is, is thought after thought. Our systems, our norms, our ways of being.. these are all part of the one happening. They are the collective equivalent of spontaneous thought. And because we are not conscious of the happening, we are governed by it.

But maybe there is another way.

We can become conscious of the happening, just as I become conscious of my thoughts. And when we do that, we gain agency over it. We are no longer passive recipients of momentum. No longer just playing out what happened before. As I did not accept the thought "Ugly" society does not have to accept the thought "Capitalism".

Sociologists talk about "social constructs". Ideas like money, laws, borders, and even politeness that we treat as real and fixed, but are in fact collective agreements. The "thought after thought" illustration describes what they call path dependency, the idea that our societal systems today are heavily constrained by decisions made long ago, creating a momentum that is difficult to escape. We are governed by the echoes of the past, just as my mind echoed the word "ugly" long after the input.

Society would stop being a side effect of the past and start becoming a reflection of what we truly choose.

Not what we react to.

What we decide is right.

Why is money such a big deal in today's world?

Do you even know? Its power is not inherent, but granted. By you. Unconsciously. Until it is not.

And this whole post? Caused by some random time-traveller posting on reddit. Not at all caused by what I usually call "myself". I am merely a medium through which this arises. No.. this post, is part of the one happening. And that is incredibly empowering. Because I know it is not wasted effort.

There's something called seven degrees of separation. If my post can make someone think in response to my post, and they again express some sentiments which are coloured by my writing.. then I have covered 3 degrees of separation already. That way, a single blogpost can change the world. Not in an earthshattering way, but as a subtle movement of mind.

No. Not wasted effort at all.