Abstract Thinking

Ok…Lets talk of something not very interesting – Arbitrary/Abstract thinking. Wikipedia defines Abstraction as “Abstraction is the process of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects. Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient”.


Accepting honestly, I have this tendency to think arbit stuff, where others would tend to put their grey matter into better use. You may say that these are the primary indications towards psychosis/mental illness and senility in the near future and this has been there since my childhood. And when I was born, the doctor either didn’t detect this weirdo stuff in my so called ‘brain’ or were totally ignorant of the fact.


This kind of thinking has mixed results: On one side you are lost somewhere in the middle of a brainstorming conversation and on the other side you think hard on solutions (I guess mostly logical) to problems where others may be lost in the problem itself. The flip side though looms large on your character. When my mathematics professor (By the way my favorite subject…I know…It’s difficult to get through the exams) is explaining the steps to attack a problem in exponential series, I find myself fighting with the parameters that could be used to complicate and improve the Keynesian model. Where am I? Neither in the class, nor in front of the Macro-Economics book. If I were to extrapolate it, I would be juggling my options of choosing a pie chart over a bar-chart to compare shares for a report, when I am dating a babe on her blind date. God save her.