Blake’s fear of single vision and Newton’s sleep reads like an early diagnosis of reality drift. A slow collapse of fidelity where abstraction crowds out lived meaning. When imagination is subordinated to certainty, cultures lose the shared perceptual depth that lets people recognize one another as inhabiting the same world. Albion’s sickness feels less like moral failure than a breakdown in compression. Too much explanation, not enough vision, and a thinning of what reality can hold.
What strikes me is how the internet seems to intensify the very sickness Blake was naming. Instead of widening perception, it often encases us in cultural ghettos where we gather with those who already share our vision, mistaking reinforcement for understanding. Our spheres shrink just when they most need to expand.
It can feel despondent to realise this clarity was available so long ago and we still make the same mistakes, now amplified by technology. And yet, perhaps Christmas carries the counter-truth Blake trusted: that vision can be reborn at any moment. That imagination still breaks through enclosure. That the divine keeps arriving quietly, asking only that we learn to see again.
There's a parallel between the internet and the East India Company, in that both have been innovations creating world-spanning empires enabling great concentrations of wealth for some, and rich cultural exchange for those open to it. There's the tendency to blame such for their demonic dimensions, while discounting and even denying the angelic ones. Yet both are real.
In 1979 in India my lover and I were riding an overnight steam train from Calcutta northwards, when a young Indian man offered my companion his sleeping berth with the women of his family. She accepted, and he took her place on the wooded second-class bench across from me. "Are you a Christian?", he asked. "A Buddhist", I answered. He then said he was Christian. Perhaps a motive for his charity? Yet, is the world not enriched by the exchange of spiritual philosophies between cultures? And India, despite the often-cruel plunder, enriched by the railroads Empire built?
By which I meant, your article (and Blake’s concern for the external world) is timely. We do seem now to be in a situation of separation, with economic, political and environmental division between countries and within social groups in countries, as well as reductivism being the guiding philosophy in science and even (unbelievably!) in culture. Ironically, I feel that vast numbers of people are turning away from this destructive, soulless approach to life. Perhaps it is a good time for us to be hearing Blake’s message again? Thank you for doing that.
Blake’s fear of single vision and Newton’s sleep reads like an early diagnosis of reality drift. A slow collapse of fidelity where abstraction crowds out lived meaning. When imagination is subordinated to certainty, cultures lose the shared perceptual depth that lets people recognize one another as inhabiting the same world. Albion’s sickness feels less like moral failure than a breakdown in compression. Too much explanation, not enough vision, and a thinning of what reality can hold.
What strikes me is how the internet seems to intensify the very sickness Blake was naming. Instead of widening perception, it often encases us in cultural ghettos where we gather with those who already share our vision, mistaking reinforcement for understanding. Our spheres shrink just when they most need to expand.
It can feel despondent to realise this clarity was available so long ago and we still make the same mistakes, now amplified by technology. And yet, perhaps Christmas carries the counter-truth Blake trusted: that vision can be reborn at any moment. That imagination still breaks through enclosure. That the divine keeps arriving quietly, asking only that we learn to see again.
There's a parallel between the internet and the East India Company, in that both have been innovations creating world-spanning empires enabling great concentrations of wealth for some, and rich cultural exchange for those open to it. There's the tendency to blame such for their demonic dimensions, while discounting and even denying the angelic ones. Yet both are real.
In 1979 in India my lover and I were riding an overnight steam train from Calcutta northwards, when a young Indian man offered my companion his sleeping berth with the women of his family. She accepted, and he took her place on the wooded second-class bench across from me. "Are you a Christian?", he asked. "A Buddhist", I answered. He then said he was Christian. Perhaps a motive for his charity? Yet, is the world not enriched by the exchange of spiritual philosophies between cultures? And India, despite the often-cruel plunder, enriched by the railroads Empire built?
The internet may still serve for good, as here.
A most rousing and beautifully constructed piece. Thank you! This way lies regeneration, I think, and it’s the time of year for that.
By which I meant, your article (and Blake’s concern for the external world) is timely. We do seem now to be in a situation of separation, with economic, political and environmental division between countries and within social groups in countries, as well as reductivism being the guiding philosophy in science and even (unbelievably!) in culture. Ironically, I feel that vast numbers of people are turning away from this destructive, soulless approach to life. Perhaps it is a good time for us to be hearing Blake’s message again? Thank you for doing that.
This is really an excellent article. Thank you!