Welcome to Contrived Cognitions

Image credit: Chris Christner

Hello there and welcome to Contrived Cognitions. After a few fits and starts, it looks like all is ready for this show to get off the road. Now you might be asking yourself, “What the hell, exactly, is Contrived Cognitions, anyway?” Great question, and I’m glad you asked! Like most anything, there’s a short answer and a long answer. For the shorter explanation, let’s take a look at the old dictionary…

contrive –verb
1. to plan with ingenuity; devise; invent.
2. to plot (evil, treachery, etc.).

cognition -noun
1. The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.
2. That which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or intuition; knowledge.

Now, taken together, you might come to the conclusion that this means I think before I speak. Or something. You’d be wrong. Which is why - especially with a language like English - it’s generally not a good idea to look up definitions in the dictionary and string them together.

To me, Contrived Cognitions is about well-reasoned, thoughtful discourse delivered with a purpose. Which is somewhat close to what the dictionary definitions refer to. If you squint real hard and tilt your head a little.

This, of course, begs the question…”to what purpose, exactly?” Ah, that’s where that second definition of “contrive” comes in, right? I’ve seen too many Bond movies to disclose the full extent of my evil plan - no matter how certain total victory appears!

Now that everyone is thoroughly confused (which may or may not be intentional), I suppose I can give a straight answer to the question. Contrived Cognitions is an opinion blog. Though quite a bit of the content will revolve around politics and our crazy modern society, it won’t necessarily be limited to that. Stay tuned. It should be interesting, if nothing else.

My plan is to write up at least one feature post per week on a topic and post several, shorter commentaries during the week. Please feel free to comment to your heart’s content. Any suggestions for feature topics are always welcome.

Without further ado, let’s light this rocket and take off…