The Changing-Room
Why do clothing stores have changing-rooms? Silly question, right? How are you to know an item of clothing fits and how you look in it without a changing-room? Clothing stores certainly can do business without them, but efficiency and sales are improved with them, and that’s why they exist. Well, Life-Its-Own-Self, too, has a changing-room. It’s called the Universe. And in the Universe is a smaller changing-room called Earth. And on Earth is a yet smaller changing-room, called Man; specifically, man’s brain (or, if you like, his mind).
Changing-rooms everywhere (those worth their salt anyway) have a non-stop parade of patrons tramping in and out all day with this dress, that chemise, coat, or pair of pants featuring all different styles, colors, materials and price tags. Similarly, through Men’s brains, Life herds every manner of philosophy, technography inkling, notion, scheme, joke, daydream, nightmare, impression, conceit, inspiration…every brainstorm known and unknown to Man. And, according to a particular brain’s genetic temperament, it rejects, embraces, ignores, is be-mused by, a-mused by or con-fused by them.
In addition, men share in a secondary market in these mental stirrings, a vast network of concepts and technologies (‘culture’), by broadcasting them in thousands of ways (e.g., the Library of Congress, the Arts, etc.) to other men, where they join in the mix with the fresh ones Life ceaselessly inserts in their mentation. In this way Man-the-proving-ground, the test-bed, the guinea-pig—Life’s laboratory within a laboratory—has lurched and sputtered along since the cerebral cortex was introduced in the larger changing-room of Earth some ten millennia or so ago. Men call it “civilization.”
Another feature of efficient, upscale changing-rooms is the mirror. The mirror sustains the function of self-reference, and self-reference is the predominant quality of an ordinary man’s consciousness. It is via self-reference that Life is able to conceal itself, to effortlessly camouflage its R&D agenda, as every man to whom a Life-injected ‘new idea’ occurs can claim it as “My idea!” If the man happens to be a Galileo or Einstein, he is celebrated in man-history for his “brilliant accomplishment,” as if he were responsible for it. Why would Life want to do this? Why the misdirection?
Self-reference, what a man calls “I,” “me,” “mine,” is his power source—like a car’s battery and alternator—and his impetus, his stabilized momentum—like a car engine’s flywheel. Without an “I-me-mine” an ordinary man is dead in the water; like an electrical system with a short-circuit: no energy is productively transferred, no work performed. Were Life-Itself to dispel the illusion of “I-me-mine,” its own growth in complexity and centricity would be hampered, subverted like furiously spinning wheels on black ice.
The Very Interesting Thing however, is that ultimately, and for only a few of the most alert observers, Life cannot hide Itself from Its own Body, no more than a man can hide from his, which is to say Life too has a self-reflexiveness . Moreover, It has a special, fast-tracked R&D project, which is at the cuttingest-edge of the avant-garde, and for which there is and can be No Name. And whenever and wherever its fruits appear in the hurly-burly of Man’s for-Life enterprise, it is eagerly grasped and savored by those who can recognize it
So, in that spirit, welcome to this Changing-Room. Why don’t you try on some of the merchandise that strikes your fancy? You’re not limited to only 3 garments, and nobody notices if you should happen to wear it out of the store……
