Skip to main content

Daydreaming-An Virtue or Vice? (Estimated Reading Time 6-7 minutes.)

By Posted on
Author's Note: The facts and figures of this post have been adopted from the book “Imagine" under the written permission of the Author.


                    Humans are a daydreaming species.It's an an one of the Life's great joys. According to a recent study led by the Harvard psychologists, Daniel Gilbert and Matthew , people let their minds wander 47 per-cent of the time they are awake. The scientists demonstrated this by developing an iPhone app that contacted 22 hundred and 50 volunteers at random intervals during the day.
                    At first glance, data seems like a confirmation of our inherent laziness. In a culture obsessed with efficiency, mind-wandering is often derided as useless—the kind of thinking we rely on when we don’t really want to think. Freud, for instance, described daydreams as “infantile” and a means of escaping from the necessary chores of the world into fantasies of “wish-fulfillment.”
                     In recent years, however, psychologists and neuroscientists have redeemed this mental state, revealing the ways in which mind-wandering is an essential cognitive tool. It turns out that whenever we are slightly bored—when reality isn’t quite enough for us—we begin exploring our own associations, contemplating counterfactuals and fictive scenarios that only exist within the head.
                   Virginia Woolf, in her novel “To The Lighthouse,” eloquently describes this form of thinking as it unfolds inside the mind of a character named Lily:
Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things … her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting.
                       A daydream is that fountain spurting, spilling strange new thoughts into the stream of consciousness. And these spurts turn out to be surprisingly useful. The experiment itself was simple: a hundred and forty-five undergraduate students were given a standard test of creativity known as an “unusual use” task, in which they had two minutes to list as many uses as possible for mundane objects such as toothpicks, bricks, and clothes hangers.
                     The benefit of these simple tasks is that they consume just enough attention to keep us occupied, while leaving plenty of mental resources left over for errant daydreams. When people are left alone, such as those subjects forced to sit by themselves, they tend to perseverate on their problems. Unfortunately, all this focus backfires. 
                   A daydream, in this sense, is just a means of eavesdropping on those novel thoughts generated by the unconscious. We think we’re wasting time, but, actually, an intellectual fountain really is spurting.
                    So, the answer to the question, 'Whether it is an Virtue or the Vice?' is very clear. "Daydreaming" is an 'Virtue' as it keeps one always passionate for thinking and developing the studies which is one of the toughest job of nowadays. Think for a While!.                                                  -AMAN AHUJA    

                  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Desire is the starting point of all the Achievements.

By Posted on
Yes, you read right; I am taking about the Desire is the starting point of all the Achievement after Desire . Image source: Goalcast Achievements. As we know that no one is born in this world knowing how to do a job. Before doing it he or she must have the proper knowledge and experience of how to do that work. And, a man is not able to get the proper knowledge and experience of doing a particular work until and unless he or she desires, i.e., Desire of doing work is the first and the foremost step of doing an work or job.               After, Desire the man has to do work in which surely he or she does a collection of Mistakes. But, from those mistakes we would not have to be afraid as someone has rightly said that – “A man who had never committed any Mistakes had not tried something new.”                ...
Post a Comment
Read more

HUMANKIND

By Posted on
PEOPLE   many would say,   *a body of persons that are united by a common culture, tradition, or sense of kinship.  a few would say,   * human beings making up a group.   WHO ARE PEOPLE?  people a different set of persons.  people with different mindset.  people with stunning attitudes, characters, behaviours,habits,unthinkable. people with lies that tells truth,  those who speak words and be heard.  teaches and learn. fight and settle. love and hate. Date and marry. people of opposite sex. people of humanity.  people with different perspectives.  people with different culture and religion. people with strong heart and big dreams. people with ambitions.  people with money and class like celebrities. people of different age and size. people of higher authorities.  people like rulers,Commanders, controller's...
Post a Comment
Read more

The untold story of O.K.

By Posted on
We daily confront to many people and of course, while our confrontations there are unverdictable conversations and in these conversations there are some common words; from Yes/No to I/You among which the word stays, "O.K.".                       We use 'O.K.' for several times a day. But, behind this common word there's an uncommon story, an untold or unknown history to which only a few knows.                       It's an story of the era of 1839 when the locale newspaper has used the term, "OLL KORRECT", instead of 'ALL CORRECT'. The era was famous for using the words either in the wrong way or spelling it wrong.                      And, from that time onwards the term expanded with the high traffic. So, it is not wrong to say that unique fashion of 1840'S has created an unknown history.       ...
Post a Comment
Read more