William Blake, Brute De Force, Biological Energy: The Creator vs The Consumer
"But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer as a sea recieved the excess of his delights." -William Blake
A topic that continues to receive a lot of discussion today is the idea of creating vs consuming.
Many people don’t even know that William Blake addressed this idea hundreds of years ago, with the Prolific and Devourer…
Biological Energy, Thought, and Action
With algorithms adapting to your entire existence; constantly trying to send what will arouse your neurons to the highest extent, it becomes pretty difficult to detach from the feeding tube.
A brain state outside of an inactive, outsourced, and optimized framework is becoming more and more difficult to achieve, as networks can pull from deep cisterns of data instantaneously; overriding the human spirit.
When a person’s biological energy is lower, it becomes even more difficult to combat the bombardment from these forces. This isn’t even referring strictly to algorithms. The response time, recovery speed, and ability to recruit your best facilities is decreased when energy is low, and this applies to all life processes.
They say “the world is your oyster” but with low energy, it appears to be the contrary…
Nobody wants to only be a consumer.
Right?
I tend to think so… but maybe this is just because I’ve felt the euphoria of connecting to the source and having the energy to follow the things that I’m feeling.
Due to just how strong the cultural programming and algorithms are today, it’s much easier for the Devourer to fall into the middle.
But the Prolific, even with their creative mind, can still fall prey to this.
I’ve had my own ideas, and the energy to follow them. I tended to think that the only reason someone could be strictly a consumer was because they didn’t have the physical energy to follow their intuition, and this was absolutely the case for me.
I now understand that this isn’t actually the case for everyone…
I tend to think that the best path is always achieved through following your intuition.
If someone arrives at no mission, even after honing their intuition, then I guarantee what their intuition will bring them to is finding someone who will lead.
Not everyone wants to lead, and not everyone can lead, and this is one of Brute’s points. Leaning into your true nature is the only thing to do.
The Midwit Bell Curve
The concept of the midwit bell curve is very interesting in relation to the creator vs consumer phenomenon…
It seems to be widely believed on an anecdotal level, that higher IQ and lower IQ individuals are more willing to take “risk” than those in the middle.
I truly believe that most parts of the modern environment are set up to bring these “opposites” back into the middle, where they can blend into nothingness.
This is the middle class, midwit, social equity, etc.
A true example of “bread and circuses.”
My thinking is that intuition is a form of intelligence, in both low and high IQ, in the sense that intuition connects you to the source of life, turning you away from a low energy, reductionist view of reality.
Brute De Force also speaks about this idea of the poor, rich, and middle. This doesn’t have anything to do with income, it’s about the spirit.
In Brute’s view, an individual must avoid the middle at all costs if they wish to live with any dignity…
Essentially, the idea is that when a person is pushed into the middle, they no longer have any real authority over their reality, and will fall prey to any agenda outside of themselves.
This is, not fully, but in many ways, Blake’s Devourer. These individuals, unlike the Prolific, don’t have a connection to the source of independent thought and action…
Freeing the Devourer
So if the low IQ and high IQ are the Prolific, or ones with ideas and the courage to follow them, then how does the Devourer, or middle, free itself?
This is what William Blake addresses…
Blake writes:
The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains; are in truth. the causes of its life & the sources of all activity, but the chains are, the cunning of weak and tame minds. which have power to resist energy. according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning.
My interpretation of this is that the establishment of restrictive societal structures can be seen as a restraint of energy, and to the weak spirit, seen as something desirable, as this spirit craves static energy. The courageous spirit despises restraint, and is liberated by the flow of energy. Blake also touched on this idea in many other parts of his work, maybe most notably with the quotes “The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.” and “If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning. Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.”
Thus one portion of being, is the Prolific. the other, the Devouring: to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains, but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole.
The devourer cannot perceive that the prolific exists outside of any spiritual confines, but simply chooses to lean into their true nature; focusing on whatever they’re drawn to, not what is imposed upon them. This is why the Devourer doesn’t understand the true depth of creative synthesis, or even know what it really is. How would the Devourer be able to perceive the creative mind of the Prolific if they have never experienced it themselves?
But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer as a sea recieved the excess of his delights. Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.
A creator is nothing without someone to consume their work. In my mind, this is the idea of metabolism; interconnected parts stimulating a flow upwards. I think this is represented most profoundly in the relationship between plants and animals. Plants creating glucose from the sun; providing animals with the energy to metabolize and breathe off carbon dioxide, thus feeding the cycle.
Good and evil, male and female, life and death, high and low, big and small, flow and static, too many examples to name. In my view, there is not a middle “balance” to be achieved, but rather a constant spiral upwards.
Think of a circuit with positive and negative charges. As energy increases, structure grows. This is the flow of energy.
Thus, the Devourer plays the role in further stimulating the Prolific, and this can literally be seen as a divine connection.
These two classes of men are always upon earth, & they should be enemies; whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence. Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.
Essentially, to try to “reconcile” the two would mean to give the Prolific and Devourer opposing roles, turning them away from their true nature, and moving them into the middle.
This is where we see the gender war, middle office jobs, centralized health, all of these constrain and suppress creative drive; and lead to a reversal of all roles of life. This is the domestication of man…
To oppose this means to lean deeply into your true nature, follow your intuition, and increase your energy to have the power to do just so.
This is Brute’s idea that the mission is all you have, and the Prolific must follow the mission at all costs. The Devourer must find the people with a mission, and help to feed this mission.
Essentially, if you’re unable to find a mission; find the person with one, do all that you can to stimulate their path forward, and this will keep both parties from falling into the middle, setting both free.
Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to seperate them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! & he says I came not to send Peace but a Sword.
There must remain a divide between the things that need to be divided. Knowing what needs to be divided is what our intuition allows us to perceive. The structures enforced by ruling powers suppress intuition, and lead to a blending of all things. A blob-like amalgamation in the middle… similar to the state of an organism losing it’s energy and structure, thus becoming vulnerable to any outside forces. Again, this applies at every level…
Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the Antediluvians who are our Energies.
I think this may be Blake’s way of saying that evil comes from a reversal of nature, and that the dichotomy between creator and consumer is not actually a static distinction, but likely in flux, like all things.
I very much see Heraclitus, William Blake, Nietzsche, Ray Peat, and Brute De Force as individuals who see this similar picture of energy; and serve as energy flow promoters.
My hope is to keep this flow going…
The cistern contains; the fountain overflows. -William Blake