What are Intellectual Habits, and Why are they Bad?

What are Intellectual Habits, and Why are they Bad?

Our fatal habits of reasoning paralyze us. – Heraclitus

I have many intellectual habits; some of them are bad… well, most of them are bad. The good habits are oftentimes the corollary to the bad habits but that's enough for generalities.

Certain intellectual habits are “bad” because they interfere with being present. For a student on the Way, good and bad are a function of consciousness. Learning about my intellectual habits is a rich area for observation; my mechanical thinking habits are barriers to waking up that require examination and some rewiring, and others, because they are so limiting, call for pure avoidance. For instance, formatory thinking, the term coined by P.D. Ouspensky, includes things like opposite or black and white thinking, associative thinking, and exception thinking. When the choices for doing something or thinking about something add up to two, then I know I am in trouble – I’m being formatory.

Formatory thinking is always defective. – P.D. Ouspensky

Real thinking is not habitual, because it requires effort. Real thinking sees connections between disparate things and finds possibilities. It is mechanical for me to react with the first ‘I’ to a remark someone says. We are also naturally wired to record information and, like a computer or a poor AI app, simply repeat information, perspectives, or attitudes in circumstances that warrant input, whether I truly considered the matter.

Formatory thinking leads to “bad’ outcomes. It maintains my sleep by keeping my mind closed. It prevents me from learning new things. And it tends to harden preconceived ideas and prejudices. It is like a catalyst for forming ice crystals. But unlike the infinite variety of snowflakes, formatory thinking limits me. I’m in an ice-trap of my own intellectual making.

How do I break these bad habits?

Massage and exercise your intellectual center and remember yourself. Be in the higher parts of the intellectual center. As disciplines, I try to avoid the expression of the first ‘I,’ to see more than two possibilities, and to discourage myself from answering a question with an informational, robotic answer. Most answers are only partial truths, so we call them “angles” in the School. I am more interested in living the questions and skipping the fast-food meals of the formatory center. Better to think wider and deeper.

. . . try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Socrates also employed a method of asking questions rather than giving answers, as documented in the dialogues of Plato. The ancient Greeks were well aware of intellectual habits and disciplined the mind to overcome such weaknesses. The intellectual center is a powerful tool for awakening if I use its highest parts. The Socratic Method is not limited to philosophical discussions; make an effort to employ it as he intended in your normal daily life. To be more present, I need to be less formatory, and to be less formatory, I need to be more present.

Whatever the question, we are living the answer. – The Teacher

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The Debate of Socrates and Aspasia, Nicolas-André Monsiau