The Price of Experience: William Blake in our Age of Comfort and Control
What is the price of Experience?
Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street?
No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the wither'd field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain
It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs
William Blake’s question from his poem "Vala, or The Four Zoas" still stands: What is the price of Experience? And in 2025, the answer is sharper than ever.
It is not hunger or cold that most people fear today. It is not the abyss of suffering that they avoid. The modern world has engineered a softer prison, a velvet cage where struggle is anesthetized before it can even begin. Today, the price of experience is discomfort, isolation, and being labeled “dangerous.”
1. The Price of Seeing Clearly
To truly see, to break through the hyperreality of media-driven narratives, is to become an outcast. Just as Blake warned, wisdom is still sold in the desolate market where none come to buy. The person who sees through the noise—who understands that news cycles are theater, that social movements are often choreographed, that democracy is largely a show—is not welcomed.
Experience today costs you belonging. You will lose friends who prefer curated realities. You will lose professional opportunities if you do not toe the ideological line. You will be exiled, not physically, but socially.
2. The Price of Refusing Comfort
Blake wrote: It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun... It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted.
Today, the price of true experience is refusing to be lulled into the sedation of convenience. Most people take the easy path: numbed by entertainment, guided by algorithms, sustained by ultra-processed food and fleeting digital validation. They live in the endless summer, never knowing what winter feels like.
To step out of that cycle—to fast from convenience, to embrace voluntary struggle—is seen as unnecessary, even foolish. If you refuse comfort, you will be called a radical, a weirdo, a troublemaker.
3. The Price of Thinking for Yourself
It is no longer hunger and hardship that test a person—it is the ability to hold a thought that has not been pre-approved. The greatest cost today is mental sovereignty.
Blake’s wisdom sits in the withered field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain. Today, that field is forbidden thought, critical questioning, and intellectual rebellion.
Ask uncomfortable questions, challenge sacred narratives, and you will pay the price. You may not be burned at the stake, but you will be shadowbanned, disinvited, flagged, and quietly erased from polite society.
The Market of the Future
Blake’s desolate market still exists, but today it is not physical—it is digital, psychological, and cultural. Wisdom is still for sale, but few are willing to pay its cost.
We live in a time where people demand truth but refuse struggle. They want wisdom without suffering, transformation without risk, and individuality without consequence.
But just as it was in Blake’s time, it does not work that way.
The price of experience remains what it has always been: Everything.