The contrast is to the life of conventional wisdom, which is the life that most of us live most of the time. I have described conventional wisdom a number of times in my books, and I don't want to be tedious by repeating all of that, and don't have time to do so anyway. I do want to call your attention to two of the many consequences of living in the world of conventional wisdom. The first is that conventional wisdom blinds us to wonder. Let me move into this by explaining briefly what conventional wisdom is.
Conventional wisdom is cultural consensus.
Conventional wisdom is what everybody knows, and it is what we are socialized into as we grow up. Growing up is basically learning the categories, labels and language of your culture. Let me try to illustrate this in a very simple way. You would be utterly fascinated by that. Your attention would be riveted on that cat.