Thanks for quoting that, I'd never heard of Khalil Gibran and I'm going to check out his stuff now. I totally agree with your premise (there must be balance),

Thanks for quoting that, I'd never heard of Khalil Gibran and I'm going to check out his stuff now. I totally agree with your premise (there must be balance), but I do disagree with your interpretation of my essay. There's a difference between paralyzing yourself with uber-analysis, and digging deeper than level 1. And there's a reason I didn't have "What's the meaning of thought, anyway?" as an example :) You don't know me, but I'm exceedingly practical and a pretty emotionally integrated person. And a large part of that I attribute to exactly what I wrote about. If I want to just sit there and wank off mentally forever, and not act, well, I'm aware that I'm doing it... because I am present in my own thoughts. As Pema Chodron writes, if we pay attention to ourselves, "even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance." As a bonus, it helps me innovate in design/development where other people just copy one another, working off the same tired old templates. That's really why I wrote it. I'm tired of every piece of software not just looking, but acting the same, with the same components, and same shortcuts. With people thinking they have a new idea, when all that they really have is the same idea other people have had, but it feels special because it's in their head -- and lacking the framework/habits to judge "Is feeling special to me the same thing as feeling special?" This problem is rampant everywhere, even on HN.