#67 Your Culture Taught Pure Pleasure to Apologize for Itself

You learned to read. Congratulations. Now you cannot stop.

Every surface has become a text you must decode — a face, a gesture, a pause in conversation. You scan for meaning with the reflex of a man who was once punished for missing it. The raw fact of a thing — its weight, its color, the way it fills a room — you no longer receive that. You receive your interpretation of it. You have traded the world for a commentary on the world.

Comprehension was sold to you as power. It is also a cage that locks from the inside.