Beyond the Outsider: Colin Wilson’s Stunning Philosophy of Life, Wonder, and the Cosmos
Today’s book is the sixth and penultimate book in Colin Wilson’s “Outsider Cycle,” which began, of course, with The Outsider, a book that forever changed how I live my one and only life. This whole philosophy series is about coming fully alive, and engaging all of our senses in the struggle to realize the ultimate value of existence.
Often, the world can seem so bland and banal and boring that we forget how wonderfully unlikely it is to be alive at all. Wilson’s “New Existentialism” is about recalling this back to mind as often as is humanly possible. The main obstacle here is what he refers to as the “St. Neot Margin,” which acts as a kind of threshold, sort of what Aldous Huxley referred to as the “reducing valve.”
If we were to let in everything that our senses are picking up and offering us at every moment, we’d simply become overwhelmed — we couldn’t handle all the sense data of our experience.
So, in order to step over this threshold and glimpse the glory of life and love and the cosmos, we need to keep the mind awake. We need to give ourselves the proper stimuli — challenges, pain, obstacles, journeys — something that takes all of us, that calls us to bring forth our highest selves.
