That kind of game-theory thinking only works if you treat the people around you as resources and dead weight. If you assume the natural unit of survival is one individual, and not the group.

He is torturing himself in his sealed box with thoughts of how terrible it would be to lose his self. His inviolable, separate selfness that he cannot abide to share. He is consumed by the drive to know, but not at the cost of being known by others.

Having someone else to lean on isn’t a thing anyone should be ashamed of.

But it’s deviation from truth that lets them do these things. It’s the lies, at all levels, which mean when they come for you and yours, the others won’t lift a finger, because they’ve believed the lies spread about you.

We could have obliterated the very mind of the world in our search for builders who were just like us.

Empathy is a hole that lets the rain in. That’s how they get us.

The greatest privilege of power is being able to overlook that you’re even wielding it.

The base unit of life is all life.

And this was Clem’s cardinal sin. Not that he dared to raise a hand against his betters, but that he brought people together to do it.