I realize more and more than all we seem to want are filtered experiences. Nothing new, nothing exciting.
We seem to want something that has been compressed and shaped to fill a form that we are used to, not because we need either the form or the element it contains, but simply because it is so.
For example when I write an article I have to filter it from raw emotional and sensual response into something recognizable – that is the fun part – but then, should I want to sell it, I have to shape it even more into something non-threatening, used, ironic, the list goes on. It has to become unrecognizable from what I am and from what it is, so that someone can safely digest it.
Our minds have very sensitive stomachs.
So certainly, on one end of the scale Solomon was right…there is nothing new under the sun. Everything is recognizable.
Used moderately this is a fun antidote to chaos. But in increased doses it leads to callousness and cynicism.
On the other end of the scale Solomon was an armchair hypocrite, resting smugly in his own mind. Everything is new one step outside of your cranial coziness. If you live your life fully, that is with every available sense and every surfacing nonsense, there is nothing old, everything is endlessly fascinating, but it is a monadic life that can only be lived alone or with an exclusive cycle of friends.
The wider world is reductionist. Common denominator land. But it is also middling, never challenging itself too much, resisting change. A new idea takes ages to establish and by the time it is established it doesn’t matter anymore.
The world beyond the wider world is either deeply individualistic or entirely holistic. Filled with manic drive to understand or an all-encompassing understanding that is almost equal to absolute surrender.
