Two Kinds of Mind

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Two Kinds of Mind

There are two kinds of mind:

PRACTICAL MIND. Information oriented, fact oriented, realistic,

objective, logical, practical, prosaic, rational, reasonable,

sensible, straight-thinking. Mental processes: thinking,

reflecting, considering, pondering, exploring, observing,

learning, inquiring, investigating, studying, weighing,

debating, analyzing, figuring, calculating.

IMPRACTICAL MIND. Fantasy oriented, daydreaming oriented,

imagination oriented, impression oriented, feeling oriented,

image or scene oriented, visionary, impractical, airy, vapory,

etherial, idealistic, unrealistic, irrational, daydreamy,

romantic, dewy-eyed, in the clouds. Mental processes:

daydreaming, fantasizing, wishful thinking, imagining.

The two types of mind represent two distinct ways the mind can

work. The practical mind works with facts and processes facts.

It thinks using known facts that it has learned through

observation, experience, reading, etc.. The impractical mind

is a dreamy mind. It works with images and processes images.

The dreamer fantasizes romantic or idealized scenes of himself

and others doing things. His mind doesn't work the same way as

a practical-minded person. He has a thousand romantic,

idealized images and notions in his head and they affect his

logic. He confuses these images or notions with reality. Like

Don Quixote he confuses the ideas or images from a romantic

book or movie with reality. They put him out of touch with

reality. He thinks reality is what he saw in a movie or a book

he read. He comes to expect from life what life can't or won't

give.

The impractical mind is feeling oriented. It deals in

feelings, vague notions. It is attuned to things like

atmosphere, feel, aura, impression, taste, mood, color,

ambience, flavor, etc. It loves feeling-oriented things such

as music and art. It loves beauty, dwells on it, gets lost in

it. It is imaginative, idealistic, romantic, oriented toward

what gives pleasure. The practical mind lacks in feeling. It

is cold, objective, rational, impartial.

Young children often have impractical minds. They often tend

towards a world of imagination, pretense, and fantasy. They

dream and get lost in an imaginary world of their own making.

Adults, on the other hand, especially adults who carry the

responsibility of running a household, usually have a practical

mind. The responsible adult has other people depending on him.

He must deal with life and facts, for the sake of his loved

ones as well as his. You can't deal with life by dreams and

wishful thinking. A practical mind is part of responsible

character and emotional maturity. There are indeed

impractical-minded adults --- dreamers. And they usually pay

well for their impracticality unless they have some practical

person to take care of them.

Good mental health requires a practical mind. A practical mind

is necessary to navigating life and the world. An impractical

person is likely to be one who is fleeing reality, an escapist.

Fleeing reality doesn't work. It is equivalent to fleeing

fact, fleeing truth. It is vitally important to have the

courage to face fact, truth and reality in this life. Only

then can you deal with it. Dealing with life requires

knowledge, understanding, plus good use of the full reasoning

powers of the mind. The pursuit of understanding and truth is

important to good mental health and a practical mind is

critical to the pursuit of understanding and truth. The mind of

the dreamer leads into mental problems.

Whether a person is a practical minded person or an impractical

minded one is a person's choice. It is all a matter of

attitude. It is the attitude you take towards reality. You

either face it and deal with it or run from it. Face it or put

your head in the sand like an ostrich. And you have power over

your attitude. But both ways of thinking, practical and

dreaming, are habits. They are mental habits. Habits can be

very hard to change and people may not realize that they do

have the power to change. They may not think they can change.

And, as with many strongly ingrained habits, many people never

escape from them and never change. People go through life a

slave and victim of a habit which derives from a wrong attitude

which they could change --- but they don't understand the

situation well enough to know that.

An impractical minded dreamer can change and become a realistic

practical-minded person. But the change must come from within

himself. First he must see his error. It may come suddenly to

him like a stroke from the blue. He may suddenly realize the

critical importance of being a realist in life, facing reality

and dealing with it. Then his attitude can flip from dreamer

to realist in the space of a split second. He can then start

pursuing reality with enthusiasm. He is now a practical-minded

realist. It is all a matter of attitude. But first he must

appreciate the importance of doing it. And, as with other

problems deriving from wrong attitudes, others telling him

about his error probably won't make him see it. The light must

come from within himself.

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UNIMAGINATIVENESS

NOUNS 1. unimaginativeness, unfancifulness; prosaicness, prosaism, prosaicism, unpoeticalness; staidness, stuffiness [coll.]; dullness, dryness; aridness, aridity, barrenness; unoriginality, dearth of ideas.

2. (practical attitude) realism, realisticness, practicalness, practicality, practical-mindedness, matter-of-factness, pragmatism, unidealism, unromanticalness, unsentimentality; sensibleness, saneness, reasonableness, rationality.

3. realist, pragmatist, practical person.

VERBS 4. keep both feet on the ground, keep 'one's feet on the ground and one's eyes on the stars; stick to the facts, call a spade a spade; come down to earth, come down out of the clouds, come down out of one's pink balloon.

ADJS. 5. unimaginative, unfanciful, unideal; unidealized, unromanticized; prosaic, unpoetic(a1); staid, stuffy [coll.];.dull, dry; arid, barren; unoriginal, uninspired; uninventive

6. realistic, realist, practical, pragmatic(a1), scientific, unidealistic, unromantic, unsentimental, practical-minded, straight-thinking, matter-of-fact, down-to-earth, with both feet on the ground; sensible, sane, reasonable, rational; sound, sound-thinking; literal, literal-minded.

IMAGINATION

NOUNS. visualization, envisioning, envisaging, picturing, objectification; picture, vision, image, mental image, mental picture, visual image, percept, concept, conception, mental representation or presentation, Vorstellung [G.]; imagery, dreamery.

7. idealism, idealization; ideal, ideality; visionariness, fancifulness; romanticism, romance; utopianism; quixotism, quixotry; impracticality, unpracticalness, unrealism, unreality; unreasonableness, irrationality; wishful thinking;

8. dreaminess, dreamery, dreamfulness, musefulness; dreamlikeness; dreaming, musing; daydreaming, pipe dreaming [coll.], castle building.

9. dream, reverie, muse, trance; daydream, pipe dream [coll.]

10. air castle, castle in the air, castle in the sky or skies, castle in Spain, chateau en Espagne [F.], pleasure dome of Kubla Khan.

11. utopia, paradise, heaven, heaven on earth; millennium, kingdom come; dreamland, wonderland, cloudland, fairyland;

Source: Roget’s International Thesaurus

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Feb 2002