Exploring Thinking vs. Writing Through Chicken-Egg and Facebook-Meta Analogies

Does writing come first or thinking?

Massùod Hemmat
5 min readOct 22, 2023
AI-generated art via Bing AI

Introduction

The timeless puzzle, “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?” is not just a riddle for biologists but can also offer a compelling metaphor for writers. At the heart of every writer’s journey lies a pivotal question: Does writing spring from thought, or does the act of writing kindle further thinking?

In this article, I’d like to elaborate on this using the chicken vs. the egg analogy and also Facebook to Meta’s transformation, in the form of an analogy.

Some wonder how you can write without thinking. After all, writing is just thinking put into words. When writers write, they’re meeting their own ideas for the first time, too. Is the goal of writing to think? Or do we only start to think when we actually begin the process? It’s up to you to decide after reading this article.

A. The Chicken and the Egg Analogy

1. Thinking as the Precursor to Writing: The Chicken Before the Egg

Just as a chicken lays the egg, our minds often conjure ideas, emotions, and narratives before they ever manifest on paper. Before J.K…

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Massùod Hemmat

Writer (Thinker), Infopreneur, CEO, Web/Tech Cons., IR/AI Enthusiast, Polymath, & Global citizen — I write because it isn’t there. LinkedIn.com/in/mhemmat