Number 6

In my previous post, ten questions were examined.They were made up as I went along, much like life. There was, I found after referring to the first comment (thanks Doc!), a missing question. Not really missing but the result of nine things misnumbered as ten. Why did I unconsciously skip number 6? My mind immediately raises this, a memory of a story about a nameless man that I watched and thought about in the 1960s. Here is what I found: a montage of The Prisoner trailer combined with a hip-hop artist and a pretty dancer, elements which, in combination, cause a numerical lapse a half-century later. Lookie: 
In the late '60s, I was reading a popular magazine. Newsweek or Time --I could never tell them apart entirely or maybe it was Life or Look-- and saw an article by Patrick McGoohan. He wrote about influences that shaped our social trends and attitudes --including cold war propaganda and mass media advertising. It was a good article and I wish I could remember all of it --mainly he seemed upset about billboards. It was summertime when I read it and I was working in the hop yards even though I was asthmatic. I went from farmboy to gardener in a mere 40 years and my children somehow do not live in my shadow. I learned Patrick McGoohan was also asthmatic and had to leave his parents' farm because of it. The world lost a great farmboy when he went into acting.

There is ample evidence that we are considered cattle by advertisers, especially in the social media of this new century and its brash technology. We are always in need of help in dealing with the rather addictive web-advertisers that consider us herd animals on the hoof and comprise our corrals, our stables. And sometimes we do burst forth en masse to stampede and shout, "Our barn doors are open!" We seek liberty.

So, number 6 entered the realm of imagination, and remained there. When we ask a question that has no words, we approach the Logos --causal articulation of all things-- and freedom. When I read the wonderful comments politely overlooking or freely replying to an unuttered question, I think of the nameless character who refused to surrender his identity, his independence of mind and spirit, who shouted on the shore 'til he could shout no more --a Quixotic quest at best.