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Comment by superfunny | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps a better way to phrase this is "We think too much and care too little" - feelings, by themselves, are not some fountain of wisdom and insight. You can have feelings of revulsion or repulsion, feelings of disgust and anger.

Feelings are ephemeral and easily manipulated.

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But the same applies to caring, don't you think? You and all the others (not me tho ;]) can - and indeed do - care about anything. Caring, I believe, is just as ephemeral and easily manipulated and to some degree the result of emotions and input. Emotions on drugs are always a wonderful example, and people who keep going back to that guy who always has cocaine, which is of course, meant literally and figuratively.

Chaplin always reminds me of myself and those days when I wonder how it is, that people prefer the comfort of some culture or crowd vs. becoming an individual and unique being. I used to grind my teeth into this until hierarchies and pointers started to make sense to me.

"We think too much and feel too little" isn't one of those quotes and bits of wisdom that is meant for everyone. I believe what Chaplin hoped to achieve was to give some outliers a way to integrate themselves into the crowd, to carve out a little space that would be as protected as all the spaces where obedience and conformity reign. "We think too much and feel too little" is an inspiration to the people who have ideas and the ability to make us feel, to become aware of our emotions whenever we seek out exactly that. It's a stimulation for people of all kinds, especially the stranger kind, to go out there and do magic and art right there on the street, in the circus, on stage, on TV and of course this wonderful little prism we call the internet and any other expansion of the spaces that become accessible with time and effort of those who like to think a lot and get enough opportunities to calm their minds to avoid inflammation.

Holy shit, for a minute my writing felt like that of Maria Popova.

> Chaplin always reminds me of myself and those days when I wonder how it is, that people prefer the comfort of some culture or crowd vs. becoming an individual and unique being. I used to grind my teeth into this until hierarchies and pointers started to make sense to me.

Can you explain how they started to make sense to you, and what sense they make?

The essence of it would be something like "life is easier when you know your place" within the structure that you are living in. You have people to look up to and people that remind you about what your work and lifestyle was and is worth. And whatever function you fulfill, there are reliable ways to get to you and your peers and no crisis, conflict, change of leadership or cultural shift can change that.

So you mean that cultural familiarity brings the comfort of some predictability that's lost when trying to innovate?

It's a very interesting perspective and after rereading your comment:

> I believe what Chaplin hoped to achieve was to give some outliers a way to integrate themselves into the crowd

thanks to your explanation I now realize it reminds me of Anomia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie which is thought to be caused by a divergence between personal standards and group standards.

I first had trouble following your original comment but it was intriguing, yet now with your clarifications and after rereading the wikipedia article I see your view as an extremely insightful!!

Do you believe that "We think too much and feel too little" was meant to help those who suffer from this divergence?

I would love to know your thoughts on all this, and how you weights the pros and cons of being a follower vs an innovator.

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