Back to our regular scheduling

So, rested and fed, I can return to Blake. I guess my question here is why don't more people spend more time thinking about this sort of thing? Life seems to me almost worthless without the sense of wonder and possibility that's encompassed so well in these lines. The times when I've felt the lowest, the worst, have been the times when I couldn't see this, when I felt trapped by certainty. It's not easy, sometimes, to keep this sort of thing in mind, I mean the force with which the established paradigm seeks to assert itself, to confirm itself and to deny the possibility of other modes of existence frightens me with its intensity. Buying and selling things is a great and worthy endeavour. Money is real and those who have it matter more than those who don't. Other people can know what's good and what's bad for you. This is democracy. Your relationship with god must be mediated by an organisation. God is a being. Self-realisation is more important than keeping your mouth shut and looking out for other people. Life can be perfected. I wonder often if those who so vociferously defend their paradigm are even really responsible for what they're doing. Can the paradigm in some sense be seen as defending itself, with each of its components an unwitting part in the struggle? If we are to allow a gene to be seen as an agent using individuals to further its own best interests, then we can't in good conscience deny the meme the same status.

If we really can't know that the bird we see is not in fact an immense world of its own, and I believe that in a very real way we can't, then we have to accept the rather uncomfortable likelihood that any of these things we hold onto as truths are entirely conditional. Therefore, my disgust at the very idea of celebrity is just as conditional on a whole nuber of things, not least its existence in the first place, as is your unhealthy obsession with it. Acceptance and denial of the possibility of birds being worlds of delight, cutting the airy way, having consciousness or being a figment of my imagination is a collaborative effort between me and you, and the knowledge that I probably can't be certain of anything at all does me, who rejoices in it, no more good than it does you, who denies it outright. There are morons and geniuses on every side of every divide, and I may never be able to figure out which one I am.