The imperative to understand everything, meaning to put all cultural expressions in their rightful place within an encompassing insight into the essence of human reality. Intellectually you are compelled to pursue this goal even if you decide to forgo it in favour of merely local expertise, since the latter is not possible if the former is not. The further you go in this, abandoning the relics of great essays of the past failing of truth, the more elusive it becomes, so that you must conclude that you are in a strange hall of mirrors where the perspectives change as you move. There is nothing more 'real' than this and yet it is not ignorance but only the possibility of a knower that dissolves.