i realized something while i was walking around the bookstore. it was like i was stoned. i could “see” the assumptions they were making about the type and quality of information contained in each of the bookstore sections - based on the sort of shit I was looking for. its kind of hard to explain, but to summarize:

PHILOSOPHY - is the section they put guys in who are “thinkers” but have no practical training in either the hard or social sciences. In one sense they are respected for their insights, but on the other, they are seen as having little practical value, and are tucked away in the store (in between the next two sections)

RELIGION - is just another grade of philosophers who use words like “god” and “transcendence”

ASTROLOGY/NEW AGE - is the folk version of their religion section, with “hands on, practical” type applications of the ideas from the religion section

SCIENCE - is in a whole separate part of the store, right up front, almost to the door. its huge, and the first section in it is cognitive science. Most of those books though, really belong in the philosophy section, but have somehow eked by. Why? Because of the language they use to clothe their content. Not because the actual content is at all different. Great example is that hologram book I read. That shit isnt science. Its mysticism dressed up in a scientific costume, so it gets past the guardians. clever.

PSYCHOLOGY - is also in a completely different section. But its not near science, and its not near religion or philosophy (in my mind, it should be somewhere in the middle). Instead, it is relegated strictly to a weird section surrounded by self-help books. I think the self-help books are analogous to the astrology/new age books, and their relationship to the religion section. Like the self-help books are the folk psychology books.

ART - and then you have the art section, which occupies its own section of the store, almost placed in such a way as its having a face off with the other sections described above. But really, its all just the same crap as everything else, but the people are too stubborn to talk about it in words, and want to use images instead, because they feel like its more of a direct line to the truth.

MYTHOLOGY/FOLKLORE - for some godforsaken reason this section is always hidden in the darkest corner of the store, and it is usually next to “drama” or the real serious heady stuff about literature. To me, this should be up by religion books, and right near the psychology books, and the astrology/new age shit, because it is what goddamn feeds all those other ones. But instead, they relegate it to this kind of intellectual no-mans land, implying that its only application is in things that arent real (ie, the fiction section, which is where we learned as little kids are all the books about things that never happened). And to put the mythology section by the religion section might spark the notion in someones head that their religion is really just a mythology. And god knows we dont want that to happen.

Anyway, right. I could go on and on about every section of the store, and the secret messages that the layout and relationships were conveying, but I’ll just get tired. But I am convinced there is some sort of agenda at play here. Someone made the decisions about how these sections fit together. Even if they were just doing it in a way that was logical to them, in order to “help people find what theyre looking for,” there are still fundamental concepts about the value and interrelation of areas of human knowledge which are assaulting you subconsciously.