"the hard-won dignity of producing new ideas de novo within the human brain"

Blazing Reader,

In yesterday's post, I spoke about how AI lacks the physical requirements (such as hands, feet, eyes, ears) to move and experience life on Earth. By coincidence, Cal Newport published an article on Sunday about the correlation between generating great ideas while walking:

Walking and thinking have been deeply intertwined since the dawn of serious thought. Aristotle so embraced mobile cognition—he wore out the covered walkways of his outdoor academy, the Lyceum—that his followers became known as the Peripatetic School, from the Greek peripatein, meaning 'to walk around'.

My recent experience in the White Mountains was a minor reminder of this major truth. In an age where AI threatens to automate ever-wider swaths of human thought, it seems particularly important to remember both the hard-won dignity of producing new ideas de novo within the human brain, and the simple actions, like putting the body in motion, that help this miraculous process unfold.

The Peripatetic School. I love it! I seem to remember reading (possibly in a Cal Newport book) that Steve Jobs would conduct business meetings on foot.

In my experience, however, running has proven even better than walking for producing new plot twists for my novels. But there's a caveat: Most people run in a way that may very well inhibit creativity (as well as blood circulation and oxygen absorption). Find out what I mean in my Writer’s Workout video.

John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.