Everybody generalises. Everything you say about people is a generalisation, unless it’s about a named individual and then it becomes gossip. Breakthroughs are made by scientists who ignore this rule and go for big general theories, such as relativity, leaving footnotes to others. It’s the same in real life. Glorious generalisers in search of broad truths are followed by legions of nit-pickers.
The ability to generalise is what separates mankind from the animals. We have big ideas of no relevance to the immediate search for our next meal. That’s why philosophers steer clear of supermarkets: it’s impossible to generalise when you’re grubbing for a copy of GQ and a packet of Smarties. Ants are a very successful species indeed because they ignore their individual needs and continually generalise about the greater good. You’ll notice that they have lots of worker ants but there’s no room for nit-picker ants or Health and Safety ants.
The more you generalise, the simpler things get. It’s impossible to generalise about something that makes the picture more confused, except for weather forecasting which attempts to give a detailed general picture. The highest order of generalisation simplifies everything into a featureless cosmic semolina similar to thinking nothing at all. A bit like being a contestant on "Celebrity Big Brother", perhaps. These days, accusing someone of generalising is tantamount to calling them a liar. But generalisations are only so-called by people who don’t agree with them. Generalisations you really like feel like self-evident truths.
Interestingly, all generalisations start with an individual point of view. When you say that all Thursdays are rubbish, the manager of Aston Villa doesn’t seem to know a goal line from a clothes line and every single song in the singles charts these days sounds worse than listening to a tortoise breaking wind through a cheese grater, it’s based on your own personal experience.
Other people with similar experiences will agree with you, and even people who haven’t will begin to think that Thursdays aren’t so good. Eventually everyone will come to know and expect that Thursdays are the low point of the week. Speaking of which, it’s now impossible for the British to say “Have a nice day” without the long shadow of sarcasm passing over the conversation. In this country we presume that the day will be bad if we haven’t been savaged by a Bengal Tiger on the way home from work or if the bus didn’t suddenly veer off and nose-dive into a canal, whereas in America, nice days and the having thereof are written into the constitution.
You get really good days only about once a year. That’s when everything in life conspires to be in your favour. Some people worry so much that it will come to shuddering halt that they simply don’t know how to enjoy the day when it’s there. Just accept that, sometimes, it really is your day. Caution is shrink-wrapped fear. The quickest way to do yourself a mischief on an escalator is to be too cautious. It’s the same in life generally, although with life you don’t have to carry dogs and stand to the right. Caution is what happens when you follow your liver instead of your heart. It’s a non-stick emotional surface for the bad things that life throws at you.
Nice days are ones that make happy memories. One nice day can extinguish the memory of 13 bad ones, which is handy because this is normally the ratio you get on two weeks’ holiday with the family. It’s also the day you forget the batteries and spare memory card for your camera. Nice days can happen spontaneously. You get out of bed on the right side, with a spring in your step and a song in your heart. You may even come up with a way to save the world.
That’s how big ideas get started, generally speaking.