My conversation with Jeff Rense
By Jon Rappoport
Last night, I was a guest on Jeff Rense's show. We had a
wonderful wide-ranging conversation about education, the joys of
reading, the decline of civilization, and the long view of the future.
I said: at some point the whole issue of human destiny will
revolve around whether individuals accumulate wisdom or keep accepting
the cycle of rise and fall of societies---and Jeff came up with an
electric phrase---he said, we need a RENAISSANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL.
That need never goes away. We need it now, ten years from now, a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now.
I then read him several of the relevant quotes I included in yesterday's article, from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.
So today, I found some notes I made perhaps 20 years ago---a
long dialogue between two "unknown persons." It started as an exercise, a
warm-up one day, when I felt I had nothing to write. It evolved along
several tracks. Here is an excerpt plucked from that dialogue that
touches on a renaissance of the individual soul:
Unknown Person #1: You want this, you want that. You're
pressed for time. You want to be entertained. But suppose you could move
from being a mildly concerned spectator...suppose you could create a
fictional destiny for yourself and then make it real?
Unknown Person #2: I choose to be detached.
Unknown Person #1: Yes, and that's my point. You see yourself
right now as the final version of what you can be. You draw a line. But
that line isn't really there. It's an illusion you're buying. You're
buying it like the most rabid consumer. It's the ultimate product for
you. You guard it night and day, even in your dreams. If you suddenly
dream about a majestic future, you close it down. You take that
exhilarating destiny spread out like valleys and mountains and skies and
you stand over it and pour acid on it. You dissolve it before it gets
too real. You deny any connection between that vision and yourself. But
there is a connection. Your psyche has no limits.
Unknown Person #2: When I was sixteen, my parents took me to a
cathedral for a service. It was a gigantic dark place. During the
sermon, I fell asleep. I had a dream about a mountain range. I was
walking in that range, and the immediate power of the place...I was
free. The feeling was sheer ecstasy. A few days later I decided, if
freedom could be THAT, I would do anything to defend it. But then I
crushed the dream. I rejected it. No one made me do it. I did it myself.
Unknown Person #1: And you still bury it and crush it.
Unknown Person #2: You want to know how I do that? I say the
dream was wonderful. I say it's "inspiring" even now. I even take pride
in reminding myself I had the dream. But then I just let it lie there,
like water, like a pool stagnating. That's how I separate myself from
it. I never take that energy and ecstasy as a clue about what I can do
in this life.
Unknown Person #1: But you could take it as a clue.
Unknown Person #2: Yes. Instead I opt for nostalgia. I prefer
nostalgia. That's how I look at the dream, that's how I escape using
the dream as knowledge about what I am.
Unknown Person #1: And of course you say everyone has had a dream like that, and everyone has done what you did to it.
Unknown Person #2: I'm part of that "community." The
community has strength in numbers. Why would I desert that family? We
all reject the meaning of the dream. I look in their eyes, and I see
they left the dream behind, and they see it when they look in my eyes.
It makes us happy, in a way, to know we all did the same thing.
Unknown Person #1: It's never too late.
Unknown Person #2: Three days from now, I'll forget we had
this conversation. It won't register. I'll have new complaints, and I
won't make any connection between them and the dream I deserted.
Unknown Person #1: When I look in your eyes, I don't see that you deserted---
Unknown Person: No, you see the dream. I understand. But now
I'm going to walk away, I'm going to walk away, I'm going to walk
away...
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