The kind of person who had no conceptual limits

From an interpersonal perspective, people are grateful to engage with someone for whom there are no conceptual limits.

And from an intrapersonal perspective, doing so helps you feel cleansed for having imagined.

My mentor was the first person who modeled this behavior. I was a seventeen year old white suburban kid, and he was an old black southern preacher.

But no topic was taboo. Nothing couldn’t be discussed during class, in our writing, or at office hours. Everything belonged. Nothing needed to be excluded. Freedom was more important than comfort.

Better to have tension in the air than denial in the dark, he believed.

For that, I was always grateful. Bill’s philosophy molded my intellectual development that continues to this day.

I personally have written songs, essays and books about topics and ideas that would have seemed off limits to me ten years ago. And whether that content is any good doesn’t concern me. I’m optimizing for blood, not quality.

Compare that model to everyone’s favorite fantasy villain. Voldemort, the dark lord himself, was known to all wizards as, he who must not be named. You know who. Invoke his name and the death eaters will find you quickly.

This added an air of mystery around the figure. Potter and his cohorts feared mentioning his name because they believed it could bring the dark lord to life or attract his attention.

Now, that’s fine for a children’s book, but when we adopt the same philosophy for ideas, steering clear of discussing controversial or sensitive subjects, fear has won. Our intellectual freedom is limited.

Just because society has deemed something unacceptable to talk about, or even entertain with our own mental walls, doesn’t mean the death eaters are coming for us.

Look, I understand people are scared and confused when it comes to certain ideas and those who champion them. But we need to be more resilient and mature than that. Refusing to discuss things stifles critical examination. We are censoring ourselves, essentially, and that restriction is paving the way for more overt forms of censorship that might be more disastrous.

That’s what the powers that be want anyway. For us to remain small, scared and dreamless.

We can’t let that happen.

The good news is, it all starts within. I’m not suggesting people engage in public debates on heated issues, or start another goddamn podcast where they interview cancelled experts.

Just let yourself go there. Inside your head. For one day. Just to see how it feels. Consider documenting your exploration to make it more concrete.

Remember, we have this extraordinary human brain capable of unparalleled imagination. Let’s not domesticate it. Try on other psyches. Swim in a sea of taboo, just to prove to yourself that you can come back in one piece.

It’s the price we pay for curiosity, and it’s worth every penny.

What if you became the kind of person who had no conceptual limits?