What?

Ideas sometimes occur in two heads at the same time. How does this happen? And more importantly why does this happen? Before ideas are born there is smoke and ashes in the air. The idea is born after bits of it are already in the air. This prefaces the idea in a rather interesting manner. In two states rather than one. This also means that we are able to resonate with the idea in multiple ways. If the idea is corrosive, it will take a toll on us. We will no longer be the person we were before we encountered the idea. This phenomenon is very selective and it doesn’t happen for everyone and with all ideas. It is worth noting which people and which ideas this happens with. There is something of a spectacle that attracts the people and the ideas. And this spectacle is very special. What you might know about the effect on humans of firecrackers and beautiful flowers is surpassed easily.

After studying the notes of a thorough study of such spectacles, we can easily say that ideas that have something to do with what we imagine to be ours are corrosive and others are not. What is ours? Where do we draw a line when we are thinking of what belongs to us and to others? This line is variable and cannot be predicted. Corrosive conditions ought to be avoided. This means that thoughts about what is ours and what is not should be avoided or taken lightly because they are corrupting in nature. “See the world as one.” Everything is shared, there is no personal belonging, least of all property. These are the words of someone who has succeeded in rising above personal ownership as a criteria for the measure of affection that is extended towards the world and its objects.

Ideas and where and how they emerge have nothing to do with their ownership (if they are owned at all). We might know well about where an idea has emerged from but that has nothing to do with who owns it. There are those who talk about intellectual property and instead there are those who talk about a Creative Commons — they deny the context of ownership entirely. Both factions think of ideas as a kind of capital — one as a personal kind of capital that can be possessed and the other as a universal kind of capital which we are always borrowing and repaying but which has a value that only resides in its circulation. Such a form of capital multiplies when it circulates but reduces when its circulation is limited. What do we do with such a value? How can circulation happen without ownership?

And then what about value that does not enumerate itself in the form of capital? Such a value is fragile, without a voice and without a denomination. Value like this can be likened to the value that poetry possess… and maybe also to the value that resides in gaze-worthy eyes.