Writing Pet peeve

If we are the sum of our experience, why is there this insistence that everything be thoroughly referenced and footnoted? Facts or substantiation never got in the way of the progressive thought processes, so why waste the time?

Clearly, if one lifts other's words or ideas, one must give credit where credit is due, but for the most part, this continual need to substantiate ones theories or writings undermines its originality and relegates the piece to some sort of incremental blip to the knowledge of man.

As it states in the Bible book Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun." So it would seem that anything accumulated in our gray matter and then regurgitated in a BLOG such as this is nothing more than a restructuring of that which has gone before. How sad.

The truth of the matter is that man is seldom convinced by a footnote, but by the deeper meaning of the words he is reading. It is quite popular to publish book after book of facts and footnotes to support arguments with very little space given to vision. This admonishment applies to both sides of the political spectrum.

The trouble we have now is that some group's vision is pretty screwed up! Q.E.D.