A secure elective amnesia would be a key curative. The source of all irritation, uncertainty and confusion is ordinary consciousness, which, for its stability, relies on ties to the past. The fresh inner state sought by the few is one free of all yesterdays.
At the routine level, the sanity of both individuals and civilizations depends on them possessing a secure sense of continuity; a firmly felt connection to the past; an ever abiding history of themselves which whispers its support for their present position.
When common people suffer common amnesia, their lives are destroyed. Ordinary consciousness becomes almost useless in an adult who suddenly has no memory of their self, of the life they have experienced until now. Plainly put: a man with no history is not a complete man. In that the few are uncommon people with an uncommon aim, the very things that underpin ordinary men’s ordinary concepts of life, and keep them predictable, stable and sane, are the very things standing in the way to their goal.
Ordinary consciousness makes men place great importance on longevity and continuity. The older be an institution, ritual or belief – the better, and the greater a sense of its unbroken practice and existence – the better. Both traits also being, (although consciousness does not say so), supportive features to its own claim for legitimacy.
The result of this is clearly exemplified via the more ancient is a religion or philosophy, the more credible it seems. Same with nations, dynasties and mythologies of all other stripes and flowers, (hummed generally to this tune): “If something has survived long enough to be this old, there must be something to it.” Without question, such integrally helps hold together all civilizations and cultures, and likewise is essential to holding together that civilized packet of individual energy known as a man’s personality, his über-body, consciousness-derived self. A man “knows” that he is himself each day based on his memory of being this same “self” – yesterday and every day before that.
(“Hey, there’s gotta be something to it! Right?”)
J.