The world of ideas is made up of two groups: reporters, and original thinkers;
the first numbers about six billion (99.99999% of the total);
the second (you can do the math).
Though this division is quite clear to anyone who will give it
the briefest of consideration, it normally goes totally unnoted (which, from the majority’s operating perspective, tells their complete mental story right there).

The words and ideas commonly heard and read in life are reports on words & ideas;
those who speak and write them, even under their own byline and color of originality, do nothing but act as unidentified reporters;
ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine per cent of all the ideas men utter or scribe are not displays of their mental creativity, but merely their reporting on words and ideas they have witnessed, which they are presenting as their own original thinking, carried out within a species wide charade.
This is not an attack --  but pure reporting.

Any man with a conventionally operating mind, should he give this matter even a moment’s reflection, realizes the indisputable truth of what has been noted:
no matter who it is, no matter the mental subject  --  what men do almost exclusively whenever they speak or write is to merely
report what they have heard someone speak, or have read that someone wrote;
consider this for eight or nine moments (if an ordinary mind could stand to do so)
and it is nakedly clear that thus has it always been,
even with those ideas and works labeled as classics;
this is not cynical criticism of mankind’s philosophical, and literary oeuvre,
(for entertaining it can be),
but is plain reporting of the salient, and impossible to hide fact that,
with only super miniscule exceptions, the ideas that come from men’s mouths,
and pens are not expressions of the men’s own original, creative thinking,
but are just their reports on ideas they themselves have heard and read,
at best, slightly rephrased, and offered as their own.

In the field of journalism, reporters are expected to speak in their own voice
(which is to say): it is assumed that they will describe whatever event they are reporting on in words that come to their mind as they witness same,
and they certainly are not expected to be creative in their role,
and invent events that never occurred,
but withal this specific cultural profession, men, when they speak and write,
not holding themselves out as mere reporters of mundane events, but presenting their ideas as original works of mental art, yet play the exact same role:
the ideas of ordinary minds do naught but report the ideas they have witnessed.
Things are so arranged that men’s minds are constantly engaged in finding new sounding ways to report these already reported on ideas;
like a play in continual re write; a manuscript forever being revised,
and in this setting, certain men with a natural ability for a freshness of phrasing  --
but not too fresh and far removed from what has been said before  --
are always singled out as being, original-thinkers  --  which is not what they are  --  what they are is still just a reporter  –
just one whose reports are more entertaining to his audience than his competitors'.

A man trying to get to the bottom of things cannot rely on reporting  --
the only thing that will see him through is original thinking;
he cannot look to the reported-on ideas of others, nor can he depend on the ideas that his nervous system automatically feeds his own mind;
every man’s normal mental life consists of nothing but reporting  --
which is fine for a normal mental life,
but for anything beyond that  --  original thinking is required.

The first, most basic and easily grasped fact is simply that man’s entire
mental world of literature and philosophy of all secular and metaphysical stripes,
is divided into: reporting, and original thinking,
(the latter being so exceptional as to be near invisible in the
general, mental marketplace);
once you see the unconditional reality of this verbal limning,
and realize its mind-wide ramifications in you,
you uncontestably understand that only original thinking
will aid your efforts to get to the bottom of things;
no amount or type of reporting, no matter how entertaining,
nor apparently on the subject of your search, has anything of value to you.

What passes with ordinary men for their understanding-of-life is nothing more than their memory of reporting what they have heard and read from other men
which does not, cannot produce an understanding of what is going on with life,
but only ill formed products of mental incest (breeding reports with reports).