Modern people are hard-pressed by their bad conscience and have heard enough about guilt and sin. Given the primacy and overemphasis on the visual, it makes sense that people like the young man would seek intimacy through graphic illusions.
What the young man seeks goes back thousands of years, to when our species lived in nature in hunter-gatherer groups. When social and structural reciprocity were the rule, in an attempt to recapture what we’ve lost and to correct a situation that demands we stay lost. Human beings are meant to be nurtured through touch. There's a circuit in our brain dedicated to sensual delight that accentuates the sheer pleasure of living.
The Colorful Prince follows the adage of William Blake: the fool who persists in their folly will become wise. Although internally divided by their actions, they must cling to them, since being faithful to the will of one’s being is the strongest and healthiest behavior.
The Colorful Prince also recognizes the “foolishness” of voluntary kinship as a family structure that nurtures through physical touch. One that expands the definition of family because touch is essential to human evolution.
However, if we persist in low-touch relations and white-box environments that reduce and confine our existence, making us more like zoo animals, we can adapt but never truly thrive in them. It also means that those who have hunted armed men and liked it can never peacefully resolve their inner conflict.
