I didn’t think this “not using inner voice” thing applied to me, but the way I read the article maybe it does. If the inner voice is truly a voice using grammatical spoken language it sounds crazy limiting.

As someone with an inner voice, I can’t even imagine how I’d think about abstract concepts without words. Like, how does “I love freedom” or “I wish all people could be free” happen without words?

None of this is in words when I’m thinking about it. I’m putting words here to describe the concepts , thoughts and feelings, of each step but none of it is words when I’m thinking it.

Freedom

• limitless choice
• peace and comfort
• patriotism (to the extreme, ironic terms freedom being used as a method of control)
• anti-freedom = slavery or being controlled
• personal experience with making free choices
• historical learning about situations where they didn’t have freedom
• personal luck in being born in a (mostly) free country
• imagining being born and living in a place without freedom
• fictional examples of lack of freedom, like sci-fi dystopia
• empathy about those that don’t have the same things I do
• sense of justice about equality
• memory of muscles used to make my mouth and larynx say the word “freedom” FREEEEEE — DUUMMM

All of the above only takes a second or two of actual elapsed time.

Words that come out:

“I love freedom. I wish all people could be free”.