Thinking Deeply

When was the last time you thought deeply about any subject? For me, it has been a while.

I just read this line from Pearl S Buck's novel, The Rainbow:

"He had not really thought deeply about anything since he had been in [college]."

This was a 50 year old successful business tycoon reflecting on a play manuscript he had just read. I can relate.

Is thinking deeply a sign of intelligence? Is it something you need to practice? Do you need to train your mind (like meditating?)

I finally finished reading Arthur Koestler's, Darkness at Noon. The book deals with the morality of Stalin's party during the Moscow trials of the late 1930's.  It makes you think.  Except I feel out of practice. I find it impossible to come up with a proper review. I am unable to hold my thoughts together...they turn wispy and float away.

Darkness at Noon took me a month to read...with many many stops and starts. 

I am still digesting it:
"honour is to be useful without vanity"
"honour is decency"
"what is decency?"

"The Party has taught you all to be cunning, and whoever becomes too cunning loses all decency."

The book jacket states that it "is a penetrating exploration of the moral danger inherent in a system that is willing to enforce its beliefs by any means necessary" 

I don't seem to be capable of thinking deeply about the subject (perhaps because I know nothing of the Russian revolution or what came afterwards, this was my first exposure to the era)...yet I can't stop thinking about it.  I am certain I wasn't able to take it all in.  I am probably not even focusing on the most important part.  

At any rate, I am fixated...