[b]John Fowles from The Magus
The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed–thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes—because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself—and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.[/b]
What, no weapons of mass destruction found?
One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, “You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love.” They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Of course that was true only for those who pledged to be “one of us”.
There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being.
One the other hand, the only fulcrum we can all count on here is death.
The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.
You might even call this the end of the story.
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
Cue the definitionists. You know the ones.
If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.
Works for me. Well, if only subjectively.