ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I analyse the flow of our everyday thoughts, trying to understand how to improve this flow, if and where it is possible. In order to do so, I start with a metaphor, one offered to us by the notion of landscape. I observe how the external “natural landscape”, which becomes the context in which we process our thoughts, possibly resonates with the “landscape as the dwelling of the self” (i.e. the portion of external context that every one of us symbolically invests with meaning, that we identify with, and that for this reason influences our stream of thought), and how both these types of landscape resonate with the actual “mindscape” (i.e. the frame within which our thoughts and the related mental scripts take shape). In the last paragraph, I briefly discuss some of the possible boundaries inside which our thoughts take shape, and, in particular, I mention one of the fundamental places in which these forms are transmitted: the school. To identify an exhaustive list of such boundaries would be misleading; indeed, it would be an impossible task to attempt in the space of a book, let alone in a single paragraph. However, where I articulate these short reflections, I propose at least two that are bound to have ruinous effects on the forms our daily thoughts may take: (a) the idea that knowledge and cognition are boring, dreary, and factual; (b) the idea that theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge are disconnected and that they can therefore proceed separately. The first idea has damaging effects because it permanently distances us from the only proper tool we have to think clearly and live better, which is culture, in all its forms and manifestations. The second idea also has damaging effects because it creates a hierarchy in the domain of knowledge, and by establishing such a hierarchy, it legitimises another one between men and women, who excel in different areas of knowledge. In other words, once these foundations are laid, knowledge, far from being the driving force for promoting and enhancing all social and cultural differences, becomes the basis for legitimising social inequalities.
