Tracks of Life

As trains are limited to tracks, our lives can get restricted by life-tracks. Some kinds of life-tracks could determine our careers, where we go in a linear path climbing the career ladder. Even people who do not like the popular career path, they often take another track, where they’re still following a track. Even in intellectual growths that are nontraditional and radical, people tend to follow illusionary tracks of thoughts.

Tracks are not necessarily bad. Just like trains, they allow us to move faster and easier. We do not need to reinvent the wheel, we can use the tracks to move from one station to another. However, most people do not dare to walk far from the stations if ever. Walking by yourself is difficult, inconvenient, and exhausting. Why would you walk on your feet if you can just take the train? Also just like train tracks, those life-tracks and thought-tracks limit the places we can access. You’re only allowed to follow a specific path in a track, even if you tried to build upon the track, it will take time and effort but it would still be inflexible.

While in real life trains people tend to get off the track of the train, in life-tracks people tend to stay on the track. Even if they decided to change their destination, they will switch train lines but would usually not abandon the whole track system. A similar analogy would be switching from trains to cars or to walk in predetermined pathways but not abandoning the indicated designated paths you’re allowed to walk in. Cutting through pathways and walking through some areas is prohibited and few attempt to take shortcuts or explore uncharted spaces and even fewer succeed.

Career-tracks are easier to grasp than thought-tracks and knowledge-tracks because with life-tracks we can clearly see how a set of levels are laid out for us to follow. For example, we can see a set of levels in schools and in the cooperate world. However, with thought-tracks it is harder to see because there is no official syllabus to follow. Still people tend to read and learn about more or less the same things. Even producing new knowledge is usually building upon existing tracks, which is not bad because standing on the shoulder of giants makes civilizations and the cumulation of human knowledge allows us to keep advancing and going further and farther than the ones before us with shorter knowledge-tracks.

Even though knowledge-tracks are beneficial for developing efficiency, it is also restrictive. If we are only building upon already existing tracks, we will not reach some areas of knowledge which could provide potential that is not found in the direction the current tracks are heading. The reason why it is not easy to just walk astray from the track is that when our brains get inspired by certain ideas and frameworks, it is hard to break them off, our brains are great at pattern recognization then sticking with these patterns. Another obstacle for abandoning the tracks is the lack of language in these uncharted areas. We communicate using language and many people think using language and without having the right language and words, many abstract concepts tend to fly with the wind into dust. It is hard enough to wonder alone in abstract unexplored ideas, it is even harder to communicate it, this is where building new tracks is needed.

While knowledge-tracks and thought-tracks might sound similar, knowledge-tracks are linked with written and communicated ideas and thought-tracks are our interface with reality. Just like how a computer interface helps us use the computer using icons and buttons, the reality of computer is made of programming commands or even deeper zeros and ones. Since dealing with crude programming requires tons of effort and energy, our brain prefer having an interface of icons systems that make interacting with reality easier. However, unlike computer icons, thought-track icons rarely actually reflects reality. Thought-tracks are useful for daily life, but being conscious of their shortcomings is important to be able to correct biases and avoid placing ideas or people in boxes that prevent us from properly understanding the thing we are boxing.

In order to think outside the box, we need to be outside the box. Revolutionary ideas come from outside those tracks. In order to know if you are outside the box, you need to understand the borders of the box first. After you are outside the box you can see the bigger picture and think creatively. However, to be able to apply the abstract you would need to draw another box.