In man’s mundane mental world there is no creation sans imitation, which is why, to some, it is so redundant, boring and unenlightening, but which is how routine minds are kept from disintegrating.
Outer physical reality has a natural consistency upon which man unthinkingly relies. His inner mental reality, upon which he also much depends, has no such inherent coherence. A man knows that the rocks in his yard will be the same today as they were yesterday, as will their atoms. But from one day, one minute to the next, he has no such assurance that his wife’s attitude, or even his own, will be likewise concordant.
Outer reality has a natural consistency. Man’s inner reality has none. It must be begot, and in this mental realm there is no creation sans imitation. An arrangement that both allows for change while not severely disturbing the status quo. The only part of that of interest to the few is the fact that it restricts change and thus the explosive mental expansion they crave.
In the normal play of man’s inner reality there neither is, nor can there be, anything literally original, and ergo, truly creative. Everything new is derivative – an altered imitation of something extant. The actions of atoms are consistent from moment to moment by nature, while those of men’s verbalized thoughts, (the only ones of even apparent significance in their lives), seem so only by the repetitive use of familiar ones. In the Arts periodically pops up attempted resistance via painting that represents nothing in the outer reality; music not confined to local scales and harmony; writing that is gibberish and nonsensical. But such are mere momentary notorieties and never become accepted: the familiar marches on.
Everyone is in favor of this. No one wants to wake up every day not knowing if water will still be flowing downhill and out their showerhead, or if electrons will still be acting in such a way as to heat their toaster; or if the personality of the person they went to bed with last night will be the same one they find their self faced with in the morning. Nothing would destroy a man’s sanity faster than being in a world in which everything he expected to happen, failed to, and the only world in which this treat exists is man’s mental one. Thus, it is of overriding importance that everything which asserts creative, be in large part imitative.
J.