The problem with abstraction is not abstractness per se.

The problem is with staleness of abstraction. Staleness increases with each degree of remove from concrete reality, as we make abstractions from abstractions: Abstractions of abstractions of abstractions.  are stale and lifelessly irrelevant.

Stale abstractions feel “abstract”. Fresh abstractions are indistinguishable from reality itself.

Fresh abstractions are drawn from lived experience with concrete realities.

*

When we try to use our imaginations and ingenuity to come up with new ideas about realities we know second-hand at best, our thoughts are bound imperceptibly by what people from the past viewed as relevant, conceptualized for intelligibility and outfitted with communicability. This is why people in different places have the same ideas over and over again. They build their ideas from the same limited set of conceptual blocks.

For new thoughts, abstract from the concrete.

*

Wittgenstein (slightly out of context): “Back to the rough ground!”

Nietzsche (entirely in context): “When a poet is not in love with reality his muse will consequently not be reality, and she will then bear him hollow-eyed and fragile-limbed children.”