There are two types of people in the world: the enlightened and the unenlightened. This is my “educated” opinion and you can flame me or impose upon me your petty refutations all you want. I’ll even listen… I may even understand. But just comprehend that no matter what you say, no matter how much more you believe you know than me, or how uppity you think I am just because I make an effort to use the English language rather than obliterate it… comprehend that you will never change my mind.

That being said, allow me to elaborate (for those who are still listening).

To be enlightened is to actually have some portion of understanding about the world around you. This is not a factual concept. It has nothing to do with how much scientific or sociological information you’ve gathered in your many years of study. It has nothing to do with how many people made fun of you in High School, or how much you hate your job because 85% of the customers are blatant morons. Enlightenment has nothing to do with any of that.

All of that is superficial. It’s meaningless without another level of understanding… without a certain measure of effort. Granted the enlightened oftentimes share those aforementioned traits. Many share a myriad of other superficial traits just as meaningless in the long run. But these small things are not what make one enlightened. Enlightenment is not the result of study. Enlightenment is not the result of being a social outcast. And enlightenment is not the result of feeling intellectually superior to those around you. Enlightenment does not stem from any such concept. But such concepts can stem from being enlightened.

Why do people do the things they do? Why do the problems of the world exist? What is the force that brings people together and yet pushes them apart? These are questions that border on sociology and philosophy… this is true. But no amount of science can possibly explain them. No matter of words on a page can ever truly divulge recesses of the human mind and so it will always remain that final mystery, that elusive frontier. Mankind can elaborate on the functions of every microscopic measure of the human shell… but never will he reckon the flow and mentality of something so unique as the human psyche.

For that reason, those questions will never be answered, not with a single answer. I suppose in a sense… it’s maddening… to me anyway. To leave such queries unanswered. In such a field science can then only give us theories and hypotheses… all of which are superficial. And I’m not saying being enlightened means you know the answers to these questions either… it only means that you know the questions exist. In that lies the point.

That is to say that to be enlightened is to be the one that’s actually asking the questions. You want to know these things. These thoughts actually occur to you… and not just them. You hear or read a word that you’re unfamiliar with and you decide to find out what it means. You come across a concept you know nothing about and you decide to learn more about it. The world is falling all around you and you do not hesitate to ponder… “why?”

The enlightened are a people who desire to continue moving beyond where they are. They are a people who are faced with a new idea and make the effort to know whether or not they care to know more about it or not. They are not content with knowing only what they know, but instead wish to know more. They are not ‘fine’ with merely getting by on an average intelligence but instead make an effort to move beyond….

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In contrast, the unenlightened people drone about in this world. The most important thing to them is their favorite show, or singer, or food. They drive their cars, they fill them with gas, they complain about gas prices and politics. They are like cattle that move through their daily motions without stopping once to ask themselves why? They are selectively blind and so cannot see what they in truth do not want to see.

It’s so often that they absentmindedly laugh off a chance to ‘know’. They shrug it away saying, “I don’t get those sorts of things,” before they even try; or “I don’t care about that stuff,” before they know anything about it. They could care less knowing anything outside of the jargon relating to their favorite television show or the gossip pertaining to the popular icon of the hour. They see the horrors of the world projected in daily doses on the cable news networks and this is the extent of their growth in knowledge.

These unenlightened peoples go with the flow of those around them, and never make an effort to exceed that flow. They never take a step outside of their box to understand something they’d never known about before. Most of them don’t even know English outside of what they may read in a CD cover. And there are even words there that they don’t know and don’t care to know.

Why is this? Why do such people exist? How can a man or woman live from club to club… or from crappy television show to crappy television show? What drive can such a person possibly have save the most basic of instincts? They eat, sleep, mate, and soak in the entertainment… and anything outside that is a place for the nerds, dorks, or sometimes freaks. Is learning so abhorred that people cannot stand to do it outside of a school? It seems these days even in schools students don’t care to progress outside their means. Why is this?

I’ve asked myself so many times why the un-enlightened continue to be so. And I often wonder if perhaps they are afraid. Fear is the driving force behind so many of the things we do. We censor out of fear that we may soil innocents or offend the sensitive. We focus on emotions in schools rather than knowledge out of fear that we may hurt a child’s feelings or inhibit their growth strictly by teaching. Politicians pass irrelevant laws out of fear that they’ll loose votes. Men act against nature but logic holds its tongue because it’s afraid?

We are human… all of us are. It is in our nature to progress… but it is also in our nature to fear. Fight or flight…. This is the human condition. This is internal battle within us: are we to grow or should we shrivel and hide. Look at us. Personal Computers, Cell Phones, Flat Screen Televisions… we’re living in an era that was Science Fiction to the 80s. But if we all ran… where would we be? We’re in an age of progression… immense… immaculate progression! It’s all around you, you can’t avoid it. It bombards you when you leave your house, when you move about. It’s everywhere! And yet despite that... there are still people who in and of themselves… refuse to progress. They can’t even set the time on the VCR they bought in 1992. What’s wrong with that? WHY?

We are human… and that shouldn’t be a problem. But I guess if anything, that’s the best answer you’ll ever get: we… are human. Fight or flight… what do you want to do today? We either choose to move on or we dwell where we are intellectually. We either choose to understand and make such an effort to understand… or we don’t understand. We’re human… we hurt, maim, or kill that which we do not understand. And the majority rules. We’re like the Jormangund (Midgard Serpent)… a serpent… devouring its own tail. In the end, I wonder what’ll be left….

Who says that? I say that.
The Romancer Mercurious, curmudgeon on-line…