Sublime

Whatever their conscious motives, these men cannot know why they are as they are. Nor can we account for why we are not like them.

An objective phenomenon exists independently of human consciousness and human beliefs.

liberalism: firstly, that humans will lose their value completely; secondly, that humans will still be valuable collectively, but they will lose their individual authority, and will instead be managed by external algorithms.

The urge for retribution depends upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior.

We need only acknowledge that efforts matter and that people can change.

I want to show you that an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition. It is a feature of our evolutionary design, not a bug or error that crept into minds that would otherwise be objective and rational.

Where change is impossible, or unresponsive to demands, we can chart some other course. In improving ourselves and society, we are working directly with the forces of nature,

the people adopted just enough of the majority stance to be seen as acceptable members of the town.