Observing
Well, mind frequently thinks about the best things that we experience in our lives.
Sometimes I feel that observing is one of the most interesting things to do... Observing people interactions, relationships, emotions, self-concepts, beauty of the complexity in society, evolution of technology, evolution of culture, evolution of science, evolution of knowledge, evolution of thought, evolution of life, philosophy behind life..........just Observing. Even in this passive state, one can obtain unbounded joy and satisfication - by just observing, trying to understand, and correctly or wrongly trying to form rules that govern these observations.
In fact, in a predominantly active life, I fear that one may fail to experience the joys that mere observation provides.
Both are a means of transfer of knowledge: actively communicating with people exchanges ideas, knowledge, cultural memes - we come to know, for example, whether we have a meeting today evening or there is an exam tomorrow; similarly, passivity may include activities such as observation of phenomenon, reading books, browsing the internet, thinking, meditating, writing something, etc, which are basically the gathering of new knowledge (learning) or finding new concepts to relate things (analysing/understanding) .
However there is one component, that is more prominant in one methodology, and close to absent in the other. Transfer of Emotions.
Active communication has good transfer of emotions, which is absent in the passive method. Not only does it transfer emotions, but also lets our brain unconsciouslessly form the "meanings" of such emotions when we observe them in other people.
After alll, many of our emotional meanings come out of distributed learning and behaviour.
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