People are not liberal.
People believe what they are raised to believe.
Some of those people are raised to appreciate tradition. They are fortunate enough to fall into a lifestyle that suits them both as an individual and as the archetypal person of their demographic in their given culture.
Others are raised in a way that exposes to them the flaws of the world. These people learn of the many reasons to resolve those blights, and are galvanized to the point that they grapple with those issues until all of the battles have been won.
But no statistically meaningful quantity of people actually invents lifestyles for themselves.
People do not create ideas, they scour the Earth for the best, the ones that resonate best with them.
I don't know why. I don't know if it's because of stupidity, or fear, or ignorance, or of a satisfaction that I have never known. Regardless of cause, this vacuous stagnation of thought may have never been caused, for maybe there never was a substantial amount of people who invented thoughts of their own.
But change has always happened in a linear fashion. A few changes here, a few there, as technology improved and people were able to hop on the increasingly ubiquitous coattails of genius.
There's a reason that each path exists. Paths that do not yet exist are simply missing because of circumstance.
Picture a long gravel path that runs through a forest. A pedestrian walks along without fully knowing their destination. Eventually, the path veers 90 degrees to the right and effectively forms a large L. When people are close to the corner, they may look to their right and piece together that they could hasten their journey by cutting through the woods.
Maybe they'll shave off a minute from their travel, if they're particularly hawk-eyed.
Even philosophers are following paths that have been laid out by their ancestors. They just happen to be tuned into forks in the road and hidden getaways only known by the locals.
But, what happens if somebody is traversing this path and decides to, just for the jolly fuck of it, to ignore that branch to the right and just continue on straight? Or, what if they decide to turn left?
One would wonder, if nobody who ever walked down this path, the one that so obviously corners off to the right, was ever seen to come back, then mustn't there be some cause? Shouldn't they go the
other direction to escape whatever perils there may be in following suit?
Well, the path is quite long indeed. There are many branches of the aforementioned variety, where the trailblazers have popularly turned rightwards to find sustenance, to build a home--whatever. It leaves to wonder what they would reach if they continued until they had gone as far from their origin as possible.
It seems the logical thing to do, if you take a moment to ponder the curious existence I've painted. Nevertheless, I can't give you a complete account of the lifestyle of these wilderness pioneers because their complete account is frankly pretty damn complicated.
At least you'll be happy to know that these people don't travel alone. They have caravans with banjos and weavers and doll makers. These kinds of caravans can't travel forever, as any bunch of people is going to have its weakest links, its lovebirds that need to settle down, and resources to gather. What's more reasonable for these people is to travel just enough to spread out, get some distance in laying down a path for their themselves
and hang a right.
So when will people finally reach the clearing up ahead? Who can even say it's a clearing? What even is up ahead? Does anybody care?
