Walls of a Closed Room

The routine intellectual world and life of mankind is one of nothing but mimicry and cannibalism.  In the overall picture, individual originality of thought has no place and has no value.

When the intellectual, second reality of man undergoes change, it does so in the medium of mankind collectively, (or in some sizable segment thereof).

Men have an inexpressible, yet irrepressible, awareness that their normal intellectual life is confined to one of duplication, quotation, and plagiarism.  They in fact indirectly struggle by attempting to display some originality in the form of acceptable rebellion in the physical realm, through such modes as the clothes they wear; their manner of walking, talking, standing; all told, their so-called “life style.”  “Since I have no freedom in the way I think, I will exercise some in the way I dress; the drugs I take, the customs I flaunt.”

This is the appeal of, “The life of the artist.”  Men long for the actual mental freedom that thought has always promised, but never delivers on.

Thought’s inherent difficulty in directly comprehending itself presents a situation almost beyond its ability to realize.  How can you make the walls that comprise a closed room aware that they are the confined area?!

J.