"They looked at each other in silence, almost wonderstruck, each of them, to see that the other was there, so far apart had their thoughts carried them."

-- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

It's strikes me that the things I find myself compelled to study are not, as I've been told they must be, the things I "love most." No, the things I find myself drawn to write about are in many ways quite the opposite of love.

I must understand the rituals of our tribe. The tribe whose members whole-heartedly and absent-mindedly defend coincidental and contingent versions of reality, when in reality they are all too unfamiliar with the vices that restrict perception, and readily plunge themselves into the comfortable immersions of invisible malice.

It is a curious medium, is it not, which permits an eruption of low self-esteem to manifest itself as a proclamation of devotion, and a peculiar system which permits despair to embellish itself in the face of impossible prosperity.

The ability to observe conditions is not unconditional worship, and unconditional worship is not affection. Though such monstrosities are not entirely of our own making, we are responsible for these juggernauts nonetheless. To realize love is to accept this responsibility, and accepting this responsibility means I will not "choose to just sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Now ... many people seem to think that if you talk about something ... then you're in favour of it. Well, the exact opposite is true in my case, anything I talk about is almost certain to be something that I am resolutely against, and it seems to me that the best way of opposing it is to understand it, and then you know where to turn off the button."