As one generation of bees make way for the next, copies are made of copies so far removed from their original source that they have no apparent connection to it. So too is a man’s personality a copy of the personalities he grew up alongside during his earliest years. His way of thinking and feeling derive from a blended mixture of what others were thinking, feeling, or implying by their gestures and behaviour. The idea that a single man is an original piece of work is a simpleminded misunderstanding. It reflects a gross ignorance to the totality of factors that make every single individual a plain derivative — a copy of copies. There is not a single thing an ordinary man, unabashedly unconscious of what and who he is, can say or do that will be unique or unprecedented. The only possible escape from such a mundane fact of existence is to be found in one’s increasing awareness of the situation as it is. To be conscious of one’s thoughts and feelings, to actively struggle against the compulsion to attach oneself to every single manifestation of them, opens a possibility that didn’t exist before. In being able to observe the predefined nature of what really makes him tick, a man stumbles on the chance to act completely different than before.