Nietzsche was the man who wrote, "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."
I've learned the same is true of comprehension; one becomes what one does, thinks, interacts with. This is neither insignificant nor irrelevant to anything.
There is a threshold of recondite but primordial knowledge, shortly beyond which the sum of a human mind must eventually correlate less to existing conventions of human existence than to anything else at all. Approaching the boundary of that event horizon reveals a choice: either to continue into the isolating vacuum of infinite awareness, or to succumb to the finite but massive gravity of familiar faces, ideas and behaviors; regardless of the selection, all of the preexisting momentum of one's entire life is consumed at that moment of choice, poured into that direction for better or—most commonly—for worse.
Look around. Clearly, nearly every one favors a single (poor) choice. After that event, nearly no one will ever again muster the fortitude or conviction to reverse the decision - even if they realize the mistake. The cost of re-making oneself is simply too great, and only ever increases between any two points in time.
I've learned the same is true of comprehension; one becomes what one does, thinks, interacts with. This is neither insignificant nor irrelevant to anything.
There is a threshold of recondite but primordial knowledge, shortly beyond which the sum of a human mind must eventually correlate less to existing conventions of human existence than to anything else at all. Approaching the boundary of that event horizon reveals a choice: either to continue into the isolating vacuum of infinite awareness, or to succumb to the finite but massive gravity of familiar faces, ideas and behaviors; regardless of the selection, all of the preexisting momentum of one's entire life is consumed at that moment of choice, poured into that direction for better or—most commonly—for worse.
Look around. Clearly, nearly every one favors a single (poor) choice. After that event, nearly no one will ever again muster the fortitude or conviction to reverse the decision - even if they realize the mistake. The cost of re-making oneself is simply too great, and only ever increases between any two points in time.
Why do we not teach our children that our present notion of humanity is merely the first of a series of stages of growth — that the entirety of our civilization, even at its greatest imaginable height, is merely a humble bassinet, and that we only belong in it until our minds can walk beyond it on their own?
If we were shown the truth from the onset of our journeys to self-awareness, or even so much as given a hint as to its eventual manifestation, the result of our physical maturation might not culminate in a mere misconception of having achieved actual growth. Really, we have only "grown" into a species of singular cowards, perpetually afraid to leave our nests for fear of the intellectual wings we all possess - the span of which dwarfs even our most generous imaginings of our present state of being.
We are terrified by the scope of comprehension we know our evolution will open to us - and in doing so—as a consequence of our nature to become that which we experience—thrust upon us. As the epiphany of our ultimate potential strikes us, one by one we cower in fear before the responsibility it will inevitably demand as its toll. Those who look to others for guidance in this moment of trepidation seem to meet only the gazes of the unaware or, worst of all, the contrary - those who have already reached and grasped nothing in the very same endeavor. We see the fickle effigies to humanity they have allowed themselves to become... but, in a certain light—a misnomer if ever there was one—don't they nevertheless seem "happy?" Somehow, we convince ourselves so.
We might transcend the meager and unremarkable realities of our present circumstances, but instead we choose never to leap at all... and that is the example we then set for the rest who come after us. They are not "us," yet - but we have blazed the path for them: a slow spiral, originating at birth and culminating in a closed loop at its farthest expanse, with a total circumference just longer than the longest human lifespan. Worse still, if they do not follow—if we do not push them to follow—then we cannot project their choice onto ourselves, in which case the impossible rationalizations we depend upon for our fragile illusions of meaningful achievement would collapse. To prevent this, then, we create vast social mechanisms to obscure each moment of our lives from the ones before it, weaving a delusory web of opacity into every aspect of our existence - made of only the air we breathe... and yet we allow ourselves to breathe it.
Such a collapse is long past due. Such perfect irony is a criminal application of such creative genius as we are all—clearly—capable of.
We are wasting ourselves in the worst possible way.
We are the reality we create. Until more than a mere handful of individuals will otherwise, we children of the universe will continue to be known to our destinies not by the names it has reserved for us - but by the limiting designation we elect for ourselves as a civilization, and which we reinforce in every moment of our complacency: "afraid."
Transcend. It's a choice - and, like all other choices, it can't make itself.
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