Thought-provoking articles in five parts

1
“Sometime in the next month I’ll be starting a daily cognolog”.

“What is that?” I hear you ask.

“I’ll explain” I reply.

“Oh get on with it!” you say.

“OK Are you sitting comfortably?”

That was a conversation – of sorts. However even though it was supposed to be you, the reader, alternating with me, the writer, of course I did all the ‘talking’. So you’re completely passive. That’s the nature of the reader/writer relationship.

2 Can you think of a good name for a scheme where thoughts are contributed by both reader and writer? Over to you…

Hmmm. I’ve already given you ‘the answer’ so there wasn’t much thinking going on. A moment or two then press on. Sometimes an article or story causes some people to reflect but they’re not given much of a helping hand by the author to guide them. The reader might think “That’s interesting/odd/clever/wrong”, but very rarely get down to constructive thinking. See! There I go again telling you what to think (odd/clever etc.) when you could have stopped and written an essay on how people really react to provoking articles.

3 Suppose instead I wrote something like: What is it that makes people stop and review what the author has written? Does the reader need a cue… or a space to doodle … or a definite question… or a ‘reward’ for ‘guessing correctly’… or… Now you’re being told, in much the way as we’re used to in speech, that “I’ve done my bit – Your turn”.

4 That was a bit too easy for me to write and you to accept. If I’m going to make you think through these things for yourself – after all you really should take your brain out for exercise every day – then there’s some extra element that is needed; so that even when I’ve given you a tasty morsel of brain-food, you have got time to digest it before gorging on the next bit.Over to you…

5 I’m sorry but the only way to do this is to put you on a clockwork feeder. Good brains have a voracious appetite, and no amount of blandishment will stop them jumping onto the next thing – if there is one.

A cognolog is a multi-part essay, story, observation or didactic exercise with an enforced delay between the parts. At the end of each episode the reader should be faced with interesting possibilities with get-you-started-thinking prompts. The skill of the author is in presenting the ‘over to you’ bit with enough loose threads for the reader to pick up without telling them what to think.

What’s the fun in being given ‘homework’?

• Many people are desperate for open-ended puzzles just for entertainment. They may not be used to finding them in open-ended form as we’ve become used to there being ‘an answer’ as opposed to many possibilities.
• Some people are curious about the way the world works and value the quirky, unexpected and thought-provoking prompts.
• An issue raised in a cognolog can be discussed in the office or down the pub. It’s something interesting to talk about. Actually it’s a way of finding who are interested in thinking. Let those with brains get together and let the others watch the telly.

I have quite a few cognologs (essays, curiosity busters and artistic/intellectual tasks) in the pipe. I’ve decided to use the same mechanism for stories, which are similar, but have a lighter and mysterious ‘where is this going’ pace than the -logs. The -logs are simply daily thinking prompts.

If this was a cognolog I’d be finishing off with something for you to think about. But it isn’t, so just read the article again from the top stopping for a moment to reflect at each paragraph and anticipate much curious cognition.

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