Old Ideas July 29th, 2001 Old ideas are our greatest enemies. It is the stagnation of thought, the atrophy of the creative process which gives rise to all those who we have cause to call our foes. Old ideas are like weeds which reside in the garden of the mind: They take root. They hold the soil in place. They suck up the nutrients which should, instead, be feeding young, vital ideas. And their strangling presence chokes the life out of anything unlike them in the garden. They are poison. They are death. Death, not of the body, but of the mind.. of the soul. They are what kills that most precious part of ourselves: Our will to thrive. Once they have taken root, and destroyed all of those parts of ourselves which they can’t abide the presence of, these old ideas ensure that we serve them, instead of them serving us. We become mechanised automatons; mindlessly performing the same tasks time and again, staring glassy-eyed out at a world full of ideas which, by their very nature, have become unwelcome, unaware and practically oblivious to anything which might disrupt our lazy, orderly patterns. Let others repeat themselves to death. Let them dote upon the weeds which cripple and destroy them. Let them strut about the world, so convinced that they are happy being robots that they never once stop to consider the fact that robots cannot experience happiness! They cannot truly think or feel, because all that they experience is pre-programmed responses to external stimuli, which they perceive through the narrow, grainy lens of robot-dom! Only when you have created yourself can you experience true emotion! Only when you allow yourself to truly experience the world can you truly feel it! Uproot the weeds of old ideas! Grind them to the finest of mulch! Allow their rotten mass to fertilise the soil of your brain - freshly-tilled and sown with the seeds of thought, watered by experience, and shone-upon by the light of passion! Never become too comfortable. Never hesitate to kill your old ideas so that new ones might be born. Never allow yourself to fall into the habit of accepting, of allowing, of merely reacting. Live!