Humans on average probably devote more time to figuring
things out than do other creatures. But it turns out that
many humans stop doing this long before they die, some on
the assumption that everything's pretty damned obvious
anyway, and others, more sophisticated, on the assumption
that they've been there & done that. The former assumption
is what makes clichés cliché. The standard stories we
tell us ourselves, people believe, are there simply to be
plugged into. If the formula stories don't fit anyone's
real life too well, it's not the stories' fault, but the
surrounding humans for not living up to the clichés
(which are supposedly the right and true ways to live) If I
sound a little sensitive about this, it's because I've
endured decades of people (a) trying to make me fit properly
into certain stories; and (b) telling me I think too much
(or, the variant, that I take myself too seriously).
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