Incomplete Picture, but in Hi Def You See...

What if all you understand, 

Could fit into the center of our hand, 

Then you found it wasn't you, 

Who held the sum of everything you knew, 

Chris Cornell, Soundgarden - Live to Rise

Niche, specialised, segmented, segregated.  Call it what you want, and justify it how you want.  Its not convenience.  Naah, thats what you tell and sell yourself to help you snooze your alarm a little more comfortably.  Its pure elitism.  The sum may be greater than the whole.  Hence the summation should never be reached.  There was a time when the information you wielded was power.  Not anymore.  The disinformation that you spread, or the ignorance that others suffer is your source of power.  You can't let the people figure it out.  Whether its the big corporations and governments indulgent in some Ludlumesque (yeah, people use Shakespearean and Kafkaesque all the time, but how many can boast of using the term Ludlumesque huh??? ) conspiracy, or specialists trying to assert their expertise, or niche skilled people, justifying their banal existence.

   We each live in our little universes, happily content as the masters of our own surroundings.  We have picked and chosen what sense we can make, to create our own patchwork quilt of a fortress, seeking solitude by burying our heads in a la ostrich.  We are the emperors of our own twisted wonderland, the kings of babel.  And we are content- as long as we reign as kings.  Jack-off at all trades, be the king of one.We are programmed to not bite off more than we can chew.  So what we chew is what we delude ourselves to believe the extent of our bite.  In turn, we have learnt to keep information to ourselves.  Not share, not let on, be furtive, secretive -  in short, contribute to the obscurity.  

So who knows what now?  Does anyone have a complete picture?  Is one even required?  Can anyone read the matrix, or is it just a jumble of numbers to everyone?  Maybe we are all happy in this monstrosity of a maze that we have built around ourselves.  Even he who has the largest chunk still only has a chunk.  We want to wallow in the ignorance with our shiny little Chunk-E-Cheese, claiming faux superiority over the other rats.  Its too cozy inside the rabbit hole (or hobbit hole for LOTR fans, and yes, I changed the analogy from rats to rabbits, because I'm that weird) to venture out and connect the dots.

The problem?  You can't build your megacity with an incomplete lego set.  Someone or the other always has a few pieces/blocks that you need.  And then they hold control over you.  Merely because you were too lazy to complete your set.  Because oh, our kingdoms are trade dependent.  Not self sufficient.  What power you choose to wield over others, others wish to wield over you.  You read up your Ludlums, but sooner or later, someone is gonna come along and make a Wodehousean reference or quote Nietzche.  Then what you gonna do?