The Blackberry Walk

Imitatio Joei is the mantra of today. Unlike the imitatio Christi of the Catholic church, the modern dictum is to do as others do - fit in to the herd, and become apart of the super-consciousness of mass man. Be average and don't stand out. Instead, don't follow the interests mass man has thrust upon you, but rather find what you truly enjoy. Given the average Joe of the Victorian era has different tastes to the average Joe of today, the average Joe does not have tastes of his own - merely what society has prescribed for him. Taking painkillers delivered to his door by the mass man. Because, you know, it's hard to be yourself. Wrapped in the maelstrom of mass culture, we lie dazed and confused by the never-ending phantasmagoria of praeternatural glows. Like the cartoon cat who runs off a cliff and stays shocked in place for a just a moment, you realise that the ground which once held you up is no longer there and now the onus has come upon you to build your island anew. Man can be quartered into four parts: the top quarter, the head, which is our collective nurture; the second quarter, the heart, our personal nurture; the third quarter, the gut, our personal nature; and finally the forth quarter, the gonads, our collective nature. However these quartiles are not cauterised off from one another - instead, they are in a kind of dynamic equilibrium, streaming information to and fro. From the gonads comes our collective nature - that kind of instinctual drive to seek, mate, play, eat - our most basal nature. But so too in this basement of the soul resides our religious instincts to seek and look up to higher powers, alongside our instincts for selflessness, love, and sacrifice, so it is not all doom and gloom in our lowest levels. The gut represents the personal nature, all of your quirks and peculiarities which makes you you. Just like how the repression of an instinct can lead to a neurosis, so too can a repression of your quirks. When you're not being yourself, your spirit loses sight of your soul, and you act 'out of character', which never feels good. Then there's the heart - your personal nurture. Your personal nurture comes from those around you - your kith and kin who help mold your nature into a moral person. Finally, there's the head, the collective nurture, which provides guidance to the personal nurture as to how to be a moral person. But just as we've become too cerebral and intellectual in how we view the world, so too are we too head-dominated when it comes to yielding to collective nurture, to mass culture. But don't get me wrong - collective nurture holds a real purpose in giving common ground between strangers, giving them a common morality over which to bond. However, the head of society has failed us. Like a schizoid, society has fragmented into smaller and smaller personalities, smaller and more specific moralities which often fail to look each other in the eyes as complementary rivals and instead see each other as pathogens. Why is this? Because they believe in the myth of the average Joe, the myth that everyone should be molded into the average man. To conform to the vision of Joe, you must only be using the head - following to a tee the collective culture - ignoring your own personal intricacies found in your personal nature and nurture, your gut and your heart. You may find that the morals of the culture may fit your personal instinctual nature, in which case lucky you. However for the vast majority - perhaps everyone to an extent - they don't, and a new solution must be found. But like a newborn, our heads are too heavy for our bodies to hold, and we must instead bulk up. Bulk up with our personal nurture, bulk up our moral nature which judges what I should do to figure out how to best express our personal and collective nature which our lineage has dealt us. Only then can you stand on your own too feet without needing your head supported by an ever more mothering state. Only then once you've learnt to listen to your heart will you know where to go and how to be you. Only then can you become at all.