As way of a prologue, being the youngest of three, my formative years were skilled in ducking and weaving between my elder siblings. No chance for me to be self-centred. Where as the eldest grew expecting the world to be presented to him for his first taking or refusing as the mood suited. There was no counter requirement to defer so that became his normal expectation.
Late in my years, maybe I am at last beginning to appreciate that I did have a rather special childhood. There was no alpha male in the house to rule over it and my mother, partly by the need to feed the ever hungry mouths was out at work, or if home followed some pledge she had somehow arrived at that she should not channel, restrict or in any way try to contain our three separate paths to development or was just plumb too worn out. Anyway there was an absence of any debate, discussion, angling of thought on political lines in my growing up. Just a background permeation of high CofE conformity. What radio I listened to was Dan Dare, bless Radio Luxembourg, then much later on TV where Malcolm Muggeridge sanctimoniously pontificating was as serious as it got until rescued by Dixon of Dock Green or Muffin the Mule. We were not a cohesive family surrounded by extended family. We were all loners that took shelter with another at intervals. My world was books, books with action and a story to follow.
Schooling was also pretty dire. Education by those who had long given up bothering and did the minimalist possible, to get by and not lose control. So no classics for me, no flights of fancy exploring philosophical constructs, nothing challenging such as exploring evolution of political thought or to stand your ground, debate and argue your case. The only ground won or lost was with fists. Maybe that is all entirely normal and everyone's experience. I guess not.
The penny has only just dropped that maybe my way of thinking things through is not mainstream. Let us redefine thinking first. There are many shades of thinking. The Practicalities, need to eat, but need first to shop for food but before that need to have money. The Informational, press button A to achieve release of D, compute this term to solve your desire. The Conforming, signals say to fit in with those, these things have to change, or my popularity has now surpassed all those nearby. The narrow band of thinking I am referring to, is Blue Sky thinking. Taking previously disconnected ideas or facts and melding them into a novel construct where they fit tight and snug with no apparent logic gaps. My first encounter with Blue Sky thinking was when reading Bernard Shaws long convoluted prologues to his pretty asinine plays, which I read voraciously from volume one to the last. Mainly just for their prologues, never got on with reading a play.
I imagine that there are approved right ways and wrong ways to Blue Sky think, there must be lazy sloppy methods in contrast with the taunt, finely defined approaches. I have no idea, my background has never exposed me to anything to suggest there might be levels to aspire to. I guess that my Blue Sky thinking is, feral. What I do know is that out of nothing, apart from an initiating seed grain of dirt, this orb of concentric ideas and associations suddenly appears with one central linking theme. Shift the focus off ever slightly to one side or another and the cloud of associations shift. Zoom out slowly and this cohesive orb of connectedness compasses bigger and bigger dimensions. Visualthesaurus's display is the most graphical way I know of, to compare my 'idea' inspirations. Where the words are replaced with associations and related ideas and as I move around just off centre, further expanses of relativity show.
Nope, not a single notion of whether this is normal, abnormal, eccentric, bizarre or just so commonplace that every one of us experiences it. All I can do is be sensitive to other people and their reactions to events. These tend to confirm that I am off the wall, a feral thinker, sometimes coming up with gold nuggets, often reaching wild conjecture based on the flimsiest of facts but always good for a different take on the world from the prevailing norm.
