I think events can be interpreted on three different levels
One concept that I’m toying around with right now is the idea that events are interpreted on three levels:
Plaintext: what people said they did, or, alternatively, what was concretely observed.
Subtext: what actually happened behind the scenes that you sort of have to guess at unless you were there (incomplete definition but you get the idea).
Context: where this event fits into the bigger picture of what’s going on.
The problem with subtext is that you have to intuit it, and the problem with context is that you have to construct it yourself by combining a lot of different plaintexts and subtexts.
I find that most people are actually not particularly interested in seeking to gain or understand this kind of context. Unfortunately, I seem to be wired to seek context, which takes up a lot of mental energy in the background. Sometimes it’s unclear whether or not the context is useful in the first place, but I still spend a lot of energy on constructing it regardless of whether I want to or not.
This, I think, is what I really mean sometimes when I say that I think I think too much.