Soon after becoming civilized, everyone wants to be recognized as being hip. The few who come to realize what being civilized is, are hip. In fact, not just hip, but super-hip and in a quite special way: they are secretly hip. No one knows they are hip but themselves, for the super-hipness of knowing-what-is-really-going-on is invisible to ordinary people. (Hey, if everyone could recognize the super-hipness, then everyone would be super hip…and then being so would no longer be anything special).
There is a certain business
which if carried on too openly in public
will never succeed.
There are underground tunnels
to extraordinary places
that can only be dug alone.
There is a book which tells you
everything you want to know,
but you must write it.
Men who seem to know-more-than-is-good-for-them – know nothing. Those who know – know in secret: that which the few desire to know cannot be known in public.
The secret is not a prize in Crackerjacks to be shown and verbally passed around. The secret is in the hand that reaches in the box.
On one planet it doesn’t matter what you think, just as long as you act like you believe it matters. This is both true for the majority, in one sense, and also true for a few, in another.
What is true for the forest is not necessarily so for the few trees who are conductive. A blight might befall ’em all, but not all will buckle under the pressure and drop to their knees in supplication forays into insanity.
j.