We let an astonishing fertility run to weeds. I realize this statement is meaningful only if it is first granted that some thoughts, our own and others, are relatively worthy of us, or unworthy on grounds of triviality, or flatly destructive. Not much in contemporary life encourages us to make this kind of distinction. Pathology invites medical or legal intervention, of course. Short of this, we are offered strategies for making ourselves more useful to the economy, for coping with stress or warding off dementia. We have no current language for the culture of the mind, which another generation
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