Dantes asks,
“What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?”
The wise Abbe replies,
“Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies.
Captivity brings light to the treasures of the human intellect, just as compression is needed to explode gunpowder.
From the collision of clouds electricity is produced; from electricity, lightning; from lightning, illumination.” - 1844 - The Count of Monte Cristo (book)
My notes
Captivity, compression, collision… concentration, density, tightly-packed
light, spark, explode, electricity, lightning, illumination
The tightly-packed collision of clouds produces intense electricity in the form of lightning; and from lightning comes illumination. The same is true for ideas.
I mash up this concept from Alexandre Dumas with the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland in my LYT workshop lesson focused on Thought Collisions.
Over at Notes/MOCs are Dialectics, we continue marinating in this pressure cooker of thought.