"A young man with an active mind," Ulrich reflected, "is constantly sending out ideas in every direction. But only those that find resonance in his environment will be reflected back to him and consolidate, while all the other dispatches are scattered in space and lost!"...And so Ulrich felt that what he had just thought was not entirely without significance. For if, in the course of time, commonplace and impersonal ideas are automatically reinforced while unusual ideas fade away, so that almost everyone, with a mechanical certainty, is bound to become increasingly mediocre, this explains why, despite the thousandfold possiblities available to everyone, the average human being is in fact average."
Robert Musil, "The Man Without Qualities"
