(More of that previous story):
Life provides man with his primary, physical reality, and his brain with the blueprint for his second reality. But it is his job to build it and continually tinker with it. Change man exerts on physical reality is called progress, and is for the purpose of helping keep him alive. Change he makes in the second reality is called fashion, and is for the purpose of helping keep the second reality alive.
For its own purposes, physical reality does not need to be altered, while the very existence of the second reality depends on endless alteration. Physical reality is the same for everyone, but demonstratively, life has placed different second reality blueprints in men’s brains. Thus they have no choice but to instinctively construct institutions that differ one from another.
While man’s relationship to physical reality is direct and consistent, (he eats, he sleeps, he has sex, he survives another day and that is it), his relationship to his second reality is uncertain and forever inconsistent. A reflection of the fact that so too are the components of which it is constructed, (all features of human culture), men always eat food and drink water, but sometimes are Catholic, and sometimes Baptist, and sometimes like hip hop, and sometimes heavy metal.
Man’s connection to physical reality is objective, and matters of taste are of no relevance. In the second reality, taste is all there is; corn is food and food is survival and all want to survive. Cubism is cubism, and you personally either like it or not, and whether you do or not – matters not. The intensity with which men’s brains are imprinted with the second reality also varies widely. Some men’s lives seem centered there around, (the ultra-civilized with their myriad cultural pursuits), while the programming in other men’s brains is not so slanted. Their lives are more tied to physical reality, with merely surviving and enjoying the activities directly related thereto being their main activity.
This situation is also present in each man’s brain. Part of it being inherently engaged with the physical realities of survival, and the conscious part, although likewise responsible when appropriate, is for the most part, free to pursue the creation of the second, non-physical reality whose blueprints are therein imprinted. When consciousness is not busy helping you figure out better ways to survive, it is busy creating new fashions; making up new religions, inventing new politics, designing new financial schemes, concocting new apocalyptic scenarios.
J.