How Do Ideas Evolve?

This piece discusses how our thoughts and ideas evolve alongside our openness to experience. By giving our ideas both the space and time to exist as they are, we can observe their process to see what they want to become. It is similar to tending a campfire. You see the vision the fire has, and help it to breathe by moving the wood. Ideas are acted upon. We create alongside the energy they bring to our lives, and with it, we deliver their form. This is a reader-supported publication. Please consider subscribing.

What We Do Is An Expression of Our Experience

Every part of existence tells us something about the nature of existence itself. were created through the collision of tectonic plates. The headwaters of rivers are sourced from melting glaciers, snow, or rainfall, and one of the earliest human traits, bipedalism, evolved over 4 million years ago.1 Natural existence, beginning with the explosion of space, has evolved through a series of interactions. Life is in constant conversation with itself through the existence of all things. An idea shared centuries ago remains a part of our lives today. Bread was made during the Neolithic period, and art precedes our species if you interpret Homo Erectus’ zig-zag lines as such.2 All forms that can express their existence, that can share they were here and existed at some point in time in the vast existence of the Universe, communicate it in some way. Animals mark their territory, and trees send distress signals about drought and disease through the underground fungal networks.3 Each of us is sharing an insight about existence. You are existence experiencing itself.

The things we make become extensions of ourselves. This occurs through our relationships and conversations with others, physical creations, and the ways we lend ourselves to our communities. Nonetheless, once we have done so, these extensions have left the bounds of our control as our intentions become other people’s perceptions. What separates us from other natural sources of art is that humans can imagine. We can think of possibilities that have not yet existed and place ourselves in them. By imagining a scene on an autumn day in Vermont with greenery canvassed with colors, we can paint it. The trees cannot imagine this, but instead exist as the art of changing seasons. We can work to create something from nothing, and what comes of it lies in the unknown. The unknown asks that when we imagine and create, we do so in contribution to the unknown. Creating for known outcomes places immediate limitations on what can become of it. As the act of creating is done by imagining it, taking the non-existent and making it known, we are the living, breathing version of this. We come from non-existence, and through the creation of ourselves, we become known.

Our imaginations are afforded to us through the neural circuits that lie in the brain. They combine in novel ways to produce original images and speculations so that we can anticipate future events and enrich our sense of the world.5 Through this, we can discover unique ideas, be innovative, and solve complex problems. When we look at art, or anything made by humans, we are witnessing the product of a process. We are sharing our present with someone’s past. That I can visit the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and see the works of Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, and Toulouse, took the imagination not only of the individual artists but also the architects of the building and curators of the museum. Every idea we have is built upon. We are simultaneously a timeless piece of the universe and a definitive existence. However, it is through the exchange of creation and observation that allows us to be in a continuous contribution to the rest of existence.

During my visit to Alte Pinakothek, I observed the art that has outlived many. If you haven’t figured out by now, time is a construct I can’t shake. I love to consider that I can stand in the presence that thousands of others have over decades. Time is specified yet remains so dynamic that everyone will perceive it to pass at varying rates. With an ending unbeknownst to us, time is pervasive throughout our lives and irrelevant to the rest of the universe. However, its relevance is dependent on the perceiver and their way of life. In speaking with a lady at work, she mentioned that when you’re retired, it doesn’t matter what day it is. My response was, “Who’s to say it’s Tuesday?” We both laughed, another way that you carry on through others. People are memorable by how they make you feel, and it’s this way with art, too. Here, we might consider how this translates to the digital age, where art is often consumed individually and on the internet. What’s enticing about creating work that elicits emotions is that you will be remembered for it. However, if you’ve read my previous piece on rage-bait culture, we can understand why this approach has harmful effects on society.

Ideas Outlive, and Outlived Ideas

Tangible forms of creation, the concrete representation of an imagined idea, outlive their creators. The one who has observed the thought produces its form, while others will go on to observe this representation of the thought, and from it, create something new. Perhaps my favorite examples of this is Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs, which is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Kosuth represents the chair in three ways: a chair, a photograph of a chair, and the definition of a chair. He did not make the chair, take the photograph, or write any of the pieces, but simply put them together to beg the question: which representation of the chair is the most accurate?6

Yet, this concept does not have its beginnings or endings with Kosuth. It began with Plato’s realm of Platonic ideals and his postulation that our plane of existence is a representation of the ideal, that a chair is only a representation of the “ideal” chair.7 Kosuth expanded this point to consider which representation is the most accurate? Of course, Plato couldn’t have imagined a photograph to be involved. This conversation will not end with Kosuth either.

In May, at the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, Austria, which overlooks the city, I saw the exhibit of Nika Neelova. Her exhibit, Cascade, “collapses time and material histories into recursive loops,” by reimagining ancient myths and rituals she addresses “a landscape permeated by extreme loneliness that offers a walk along the edge of the dying world in which our longing solitary selves are confronted with a shared consciousness spread across artifacts and timelines.”8 The exhibit was structured in three chapters, Foundations, which evaluated the “epoch preceding and forming the basis of the human world.” Apparition, that looked at humanity as a “fleeting phenomenon on Earth,” and Prophecy, the “relics of a lost or perhaps future world that leads us back to the origin.” A part of the exhibit that struck me was “STACK.” Chairs were placed one on top of the other forming a V-shape. She writes, “the absence of bodies for which these chairs were once intended makes them all the more present.”

Throughout this trip, I had already been considering that we coexist in the present with all that has existed in the past. That eternity is the mark of a presence. Neelova nudged me further to consider this in our daily lives. Those chairs leave a space to be filled, and many will come to occupy them. Simultaneously, all of the spaces have been filled and remain to be filled. We can consider every space we’ve been part of, and know that our presence exists there in memory. Nothing departs, but everything leaves. By creating with the present, we are joining ourselves in time to produce something that represents this union of ourselves in time. When we look back on our creations, they tell the story of ourselves at that time. Everything we’ve created as humans shares something about our past. The invention of the water wheel marked a shift towards using natural energy. Agriculture fundamentally changed the way humans lived as we went away from the hunter-gather lifestyle towards permanent settlements.9 Now, as we face the threat of artificial creations that will exist in a tertiary plane and influence our primary experiences, it is vital to continue to make things that represent the human form. That demonstrates the ideas of what it means to be human.

We can view art through a series of lenses, but it’s not until we’ve done some reflecting that we can define their eras. Through our circumstances, we create and, later, we discover meaning. Reflection, like imagination, is something our intelligence affords us. It allows us to consider a different future based on our past experiences. Every space we’ve existed in will facilitate growth. We might find ourselves in a large rooms that ask us to expand into it, or in a small room that we no longer belong in. Ideas work similarly. Some must continue to be expressed until their representations are fully formed. Others will ask little of us to be made. The expression of ideas and their relation to us in space demonstrates a continuous expansion of energy since the Big Bang. That while we experience the world, the world is also experiencing us. Ideas are given through lived experiences and transformed through their creators.

Our experience of eternity is the act of our creating, and it comes from our ability to be imaginative and thus original. What is eternal is present; there is nothing more never-ending than the realization that this moment will never end, but will have infinite possibilities branch off from it to be played out in parallel to your existence. For something to be truly eternal, it must exist in all contexts it is a part of. It is to be timeless and fully versed in the present, just as it is in the past. Few people will have this existence, yet each of us exists in all things. We are all timeless. Every contribution we make, from the breath out of carbon dioxide that plants can breathe in to give us oxygen in return, to the conversations you’ve had, your life remains present. The experience of the eternal is the moments you choose to be present in.

Choosing to share your presence with physical life accomplishes its form of eternity. Creation, contribution to existence, happens through interactions with life. Eternity does not wait for us; it is available every time we allow ourselves to be in communion with those around us. As an inherently social species, it is through the constant conversations between ourselves and nature that our eternity is shaped. The immediate becomes the future. What we choose for ourselves now is an outcome that we’re choosing for ourselves later. To live in harmony with one another is just as near an option for our eternity as disharmony. This existence is shared, and we collectively create the future.

A Shifting Perspective

Everything we exist with is sharing something with us, trying to tell us something about the experience of its existence. With this newsletter, I am allowing my ideas to evolve so that I write what is most exciting to me. I’ve been considering what I hope people take away from my writing, and what I’ve landed on is this: we should be rooting for the human experience. That technology should be used as a tool, like a drill, that helps us to build and connect. It should not, however, be used as a replacement for our thoughts or creations. While our physical world continues to be closely intertwined with an online one, we should focus our efforts towards preserving the human experience while balancing it with some of the ease that technology brings us.

There is much to be created and made because the lens of our creations is shaped through our experiences, and these remain unique to us all. In rooting for humanity, I am following the path of excitement and giving this newsletter a little more shape it. From now on, you can expect to receive pieces about the most human thing that’s happened to me, or I’ve observed, weekly. Every month, you can expect more longform pieces, like this one, covering different topics that humanity faces. These will come to you from the name: Distinctly Human. As always, thank you for your support!