Another Choice

Until where?

***

Today – in the year 2016 -, may an unprecedented phenomenon is occurring in many a place upon this earth.

If one may observe, from Ouagadougou to Toronto to Belgrade to Canberra to Shangai to Colombo, Caracas, Tangiers and Detroit, Istanbul and Lucknow, the same posture of the body and the same facial expression, a little absent, absorbed and dumb and ravished at once, of all these human beings simultaneously bent and lounging over the screen of their personal cell or smartphone, may we as easily decipher the evolutionary sense of it for the entire species? Is it to do with a sort of general emancipation by means of an individual, direct and practically constant access to whatever may distract, entertain, amuse, please and occupy, allowing each and every one to fantasize at leisure and to be vicariously, or virtually, adventurous?

Without any need for transportation, any effort, magically, almost for free?

***

Indeed there is, in effect, a kind of justice: for the pleasure and the versatility of experience which were the privilege of the few are now multiplied and shared by the many and every individual, of whatever social origin, may have a taste of it all and extract oneself out of the routine, the drudgery, the boredom or the fatality of whatever existence one has been dealt. For the majority, the place and circumstances of one’s birth are almost accidental: numerous experiences are necessary for this inner being to develop and for its influence to begin to exert itself on the physical world. We have now learnt, discovered and verified a number of times that the evolution of the outer being and that of the inner person are but seldom concomitant, for this development of the vital and mental capacities of the physical personality is in no way the sign or the proof of a developed inner consciousness, although it may well serve it in the world.

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