The fact is, one of my favourite suspicions is that all
human consciousness is connected – that every individual’s consciousness is
actually a fragment of the Universal Consciousness. In that case, I should find
the sight of a group of people engaged in communal ritual uplifting, since it
can be seen as expressing one of my favourite suspicions. But I don’t. What I
see is the hive mentality at work – people acting in unison towards a common
end without giving the value and rightness of that end unconditioned and
unbiased consideration. And isn’t the hive mentality also the root of white
supremacism, unshakeable faith in dogmatic Communism, and the rise of Nazism? It
seems to demean the individual, making us all mere workers for a cause dictated
by somebody else’s will.
And yet this raises a difficulty of its own, since I also
suspect that the cult of the individual is simply an expression of ego, and
that ego is the principal barrier to enlightenment. And ego is also the rock on
which despots found their unimpeachable status.
So it all comes down to whether individuality is a good
thing or not. The answer isn’t as simple as it might seem, and maybe there isn’t
an answer. Maybe I’m asking the wrong question.
OK, that wasn’t easy, so I think I’ve earned another scotch
and maybe even another piece of toast. And just to engage further with the
YouTube theme, I recently left a slightly disparaging comment about Jimmi
Hendrix and got hailed on with bananas. Hardly surprising, really. I chose
magnanimity and admitted I was out of order, because I was.
This is the first post in June and the Shire is still
shivering under polar winds. I was out for a mere fifteen minutes this evening
and my fingers were getting numb.
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