By Richard Skidmore
We are adrift in the sea of thought, and our thoughts, our words are
turning inward, drowning themselves.
But at the same time we are being stunned, shocked, forced into
recognition and snapped out of understanding. We are being
programmed referentially. We have the facts; the references wash
over our eyes and ears. Info-flood stimulation tricks us into thinking
we are thinking.
If this were an isolated instance, we could still have hope for original
thought. But in fact, the majority of us are communicating
referentially, locked in the media mobius strip. A glance through any
weekly news mag, or an hour of broadcast TV proves the point. So
much reference removing the personal, removing the emotional, it
becomes deflection. Worse--- this orgy of the trite passes for
cleverness, creativity, originality.
Derived from the once derivative, we have lost the source, soul,
essence, the humanity, the expression of something from within that
was once the reference point.