Napoleon Hill said, “No mind is complete by itself. It needs contact and association with other minds to grow and expand.”

With the ease of finding information and sharing information over the internet, it might seem that there is enough for minds to grow and expand. It’s probably impossible nowadays to generate an idea that doesn’t have a link with something we’ve experienced or read somewhere. Ideas are built on other ideas transforming the existing knowledge.

But Hill’s idea was a different one. One of creating something bigger than the individuals.  It is based on the knowledge that when people come together and decide to think together there always is something new that is being created. It’s knowledge that is being transferred from one to another, but even more so, it is thinking which is being enabled through the exchange and questioning.

But it doesn’t happen by itself. It needs initiative. It does require people to be engaged in the thinking process and to want it.

That’s where it’s important to find the other as Timothy Leary once described it. It’s the idea that we can find others with whom we feel free to exchange and with whom we can go beyond the rituals of small talk.