Now I must create a language that has to be intelligible to many unique individuals at once. Now I must address people who prefer to push anything new away from their minds, out of fear of themselves.
New thoughts result in having to move again, but so many people want to stay rigid, have made themselves rigid out of fear of their own free will and free choice. Yet everyone knows that this very rigidity causes walls to crack. There must be mobility, always. Every structure must have flexibility or it may collapse. Everyone knows the principle of elasticity: a ship’s mast bends and therefore does not break; a rubber band with elasticity will not break as quickly as one that is rigid, dried out. After a storm the supple reed rights itself, but the mighty tree lies felled, uprooted. Everyone knows. It is a principle that governs the human mind also. There has to be elasticity. So often I find that elasticity missing in people of our Western society. So often people allow society to make them rigid, by way of rules, laws, and the expectation patterns of others. Of course society must have rules. Rules that allow maximum freedom, that allows a person to be himself. Rules have to be rigid to offer clarity and security, but human beings must not be rigid. They must be in motion, physically and mentally, in order to have flexibility, to absorb shocks, like the ship’s mast, the building, and the reed.
Too many people have become rigid because of society. They no longer live from within, on the basis of their feelings, but on the basis of their position in society, according to its rules, and they are bound by social expectation patterns imposed on them by others or by themselves. As a result they become rigid, self-alienated. They have no mobility; they do not bend with what happens to them. They resist until they crack or break.