So I am reading the "This is John Galt Speaking" chapter of Atlas Shrugged, and it looks like there are a couple of things I will need to think through. Here's one that sounds pretty goddamned true & natural, though:
"Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think--not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment--on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it . . . ."
Lots of Great Books pieces snap into place with this thought: Kraft's comments on "the sleep of everyday life," for instance; Ortega y Gasset's references to the student as a falsification of the man; Orwell's concept of doublethink. Or, for that matter, this bit from John Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows": "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream . . . it is not dying." And . . . "Strawberry Fields Forever," anyone? "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see." We humans definitely have a propensity to not see that which contradicts the group vision. How is it that some people are able to stray from their cave chains, then? Maybe it's a touch of mental illness or disability. Maybe it's a matter of intelligence. Maybe it's just plain dumb fucking luck. Or are all of those essentially the same thing?
What say you?
Hello?
Is there anybody out there?
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