# The normie and the sublime ###### tags: `Lines of Flight` Succesfull communication of a work's genius should be assesed according to how well it can adress the normie rather than the knowledgable individual. From the side of the innitiated, the work is "elaborate", or "enlightening", or aesthetically pleasing, but from the side of the normie it is not. From the normies's point of view, it is merely "deep". It is no conincidence that it is very usual to use the word deep for describing the sublime in teh realm of the layman rather than words such as "illuminating". What I suspect to be the case is that the metaphorical use of the word itself hints to the viewpoint of the normie when it comes to sublimity; if the work is succesfull in communicating its sublimity, the normie will admit that it is deep because they acknowledge its depth, that there is more to be explored and found if only the normie had the time and willingness to enagage more. Pronouncing something as deep is a highly humbling experience not only for normies or degens but even more so for groups or individuals of the highest intellectual capacity. To acknowledge depth is to acknowledge open-endedness and possibility of new knowledge. On the other hand to call something illuminating hints to the fact that what has been once in the dark depth of ingorance is now shone a light at and can be seen with full clarity and disambiguity. The thing is now tangible and the possibilities suddenly converge in the sole object of insight and are thus exhausted. Open-endedness ceases to exist since what there was to know is now known. The teleological destination has been reached. To be "deep" is to be in a non teleological realm. It is to be open to exploration and possibility. The normie has epstemic access to a domain that highly educated people would only wish to be able to access again. Therefore, to really adress the normie and make the profoundity of a work perceivable, one must seek to make explicit that there is a world of hidden possibilities to be explored.