A Valve to Expression

There are commentators whom I admire for penetrating insights. I have noticed that this must require courage, because disclosing a deep insight sometimes involves indicating that one has had thoughts or engaged in actions that might be frowned upon, or even burned at the stake for.

I read somewhere 20 or more years ago that a very high percentage of top literary prize winners (was it the Nobel Prize for Literature? Was it 6 of the preceding 7 prizewinners? did read this in Psychology Today magazine?) were alcoholics. One possible reason for this connection is that good writers have to, in a way, become naked in front of their audience. They have to share insights that reveal they have had such thoughts. Fig leaves get removed. Shots of courage can help.

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It seems to me that awareness of a given thought or concept can be sliced into levels including


Aware
Half-Aware
Not Aware, but still is available in your brain - Subconscious
Potentially Aware, but "haven't gone there"

It would seem that there must be a valve of sorts, regulating how much one can let in. One valve would be the social rightness valve. One might be very rich, for example, but to never let hint of that fact appear in conversations with friends less rich. Accordingly, during such an interaction, insights involve having to talk about the experience of being rich might be given not much attention. If the insight is even more disruptive, such as taking the devil's advocate position for NAMBLA, whole constellations of potential further insights might be blocked entirely and will never generate progeny. ("There are just some things that we don't think about.") It's like if you remove on Christmas light from a string, and the whole string of lights go out. This reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that he admired Hitler. Many people were instantly turned off to the possible constellation of insights (like Christmas lights) that they might have from Arnold's perspective. After all, acknowledging that Hitler might have had something useful to show us doesn't mean that you endorse the whole Hitler package. If "no Hitler thoughts" persons were wise like the ant, and pulled the sugar grains from the sand, they might have gained traction toward, for example, how to be more charismatic--not in behalf of a bad cause, like Hitler's, but on behalf of good causes.
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