What is inspiration - Your thoughts please

[RuralRon]

I was just listening to Stefan, and he used the phrase "convince people rather than inspire them" (he was actually advocating the later) and it "inspired" me to post this open ended question. I'm intrigued by how this "woke me up" so to speak to write this, how it stimulated me to focus my mind on the essence of inspiration.

 

Stef's statement was interesting b/c he moved away from the ultra rationality of reason, logic and empirical evidence we typically see from him toward a more right brain perspective. I'm not saying Stef has changed in any fundamental way, only that this statement was a less common expression of his creative, imaginative side while being coupled to argumentation, persuasion, and the underlying mission of FDR to change the world by (inspiration | persuasion) ?.

 

I have a related series of posts on this subject (just search "plenty to say" to find it), but I wanted this topic to be open ended and more of a solicitation / free association exercise to see if other people's input further inspire me and help me figure out why this is such an invigorating topic to me.

 

When I think back over the course of my life going all the way back to high school, it's questions like this that drew me into philosophical discussions and motivated me to stay up all night talking to people about it. It feels kind of "electric".

[NotDarkYet]

Interesting:

 

Maybe inspiration requires both:

 

1) To see a goal

2) To be energized to achieve the goal

[RuralRon]

Thx for that, 3bobs. It's your second point that is the crux of it. In my case I'm not sure a "goal" is always the underlying drive. It certainly is in several of my pursuits, but it's unclear it's the same thing in pursuing a long, deep discussion. That is probably more closely related to a passion to seek truth.

 

However, I also believe there is a great deal of overlap between passion, inspiration and the drive to seek truth. When I think of my research in "free" energy, my attempts to uncover the empirical truth that I believe exists but has not yet been repeatably and reliably demonstrated to exist (this is not faith, b/c a significant amount of empirical data has been collected by numerous people that can at least partially explain independent observations made. Each experiment is a test to produce another piece of evidence towards a tipping point called "proof"), my intuition and gut sense drives me to not give up the pursuit when many others condemn such efforts as irrational.