Sublime

there really are these invisible rules that govern what people do.

Pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important; what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

When everything becomes contingent, fleeting and accidental, and all that is binding and unifying dissolves – that is, in the current storm of contingency – there is a clamour for storytelling. The inflation of narrative betrays a need to be able to cope with contingency.

The world we experience as ‘out there’ is actually a reconstruction of reality that is built inside our heads. It’s an act of creation by the storytelling brain.

Religion can be just as Apollonian as science, especially in its cassocked and organised manifestation. It is always a need to control, a fear of disorder, a mistrust of freedom – and panic in the face of the Dionysian impulse towards rhapsody and excess.

pain will find us.

Several decades after World War II, color movie footage of Hitler was discovered. Some people thought it shouldn’t be shown because it humanized a monster. But that is what makes Hitler a monster—he was a human being, not some creature from outer space. It makes a much stronger point not to shy away from that fact. It means if we are not careful,

geniality,

The main teaching in cultures where spirits visit frequently and the world itself is a bridge—such as those of Haiti, West Africa, Melanesia, and the circumpolar peoples we group together as Eskimos—focuses upon knowing the distinct nature and name of the different visitors, their rank, their powers, their spheres of action. These cultures have