Thursday, April 26, 2007

the experts

The common man hides his impotence behind delusions of power. He says: my personal actions affect the entire globe! What is the source of such hubris? The common man has been led astray by the experts. The experts know they depend upon the common man for their existence; without an audience to venerate them, the experts are no longer experts, merely reluctant scholars. Only in the face of ignorance, then, can one become an expert. So the experts feed the ignorant on candied sweets and strong liqueur, they tell him "only you can make a difference!" and "unless you act there will come catastrophe!" But the common man is overwhelmed with this responsibility; like a bee trapped between two panes of glass he imitates St. Vitus until his expiration; floundering and struggling, pounding his skull against the invisible walls around him, when all along, the exit lay above his head. Better to ignore the experts and follow the example of the escape artist: seek calmly and methodically for the exit, for it is your very floundering in the face of imagined future threat which itself creates catastrophe.

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