It was only to be expected that the era that gave us the word “lifestyle” would sooner or later come up with the concept of thoughtstyle. Thoughtstyle can probably best be defined by noting that in the phrase “lifestyle” we have the perfect example of the total being lesser than the sum of its parts, since those who use the word “lifestyle” are rarely in possession of either.
So too with thoughtstyle, and thus we find ourselves the inhabitants of a period during which ideas are not exactly flourishing—denizens, in fact, of a time when the most we can possibly hope to see are a couple of darn good notions. What is the difference, you may now be asking, between an idea and a notion? Well, the primary difference, of course, is that a notion you can sell but an idea you can’t even give away. There are other differences, to be sure, and as can readily be seen by the following chart, I have taken care not to neglect them.
While it may appear to the novice that this just about wraps it up, I am afraid that the novice is sadly mistaken. Ideas are, after all, a subject of some complexity. There are good ideas, bad ideas, big ideas, small ideas, old ideas and new ideas. There are ideas that we like and ideas that we don’t. But the idea that I have seized upon is the idea that is not quite finished—the idea that starts strong but in the final analysis doesn’t quite make it. Naturally, there is more than one such idea, and so I offer what can only be called: