Martian Time-Slip

by Philip K. Dick

The teaching machines demonstrated a fact that Jack Bohlen was well aware of: there was an astonishing depth to the so-called “artificial.”

He hated bigness per se; bigness had destroyed the American system of free enterprise, the small businessman had been ruined—in fact, he himself had been perhaps the last authentic small businessman in the solar system.

That was his real crime: he had tried to live the American way of life, instead of just talking about it.

Now I can see what psychosis is: the utter alienation of perception from the objects of the outside world, especially the objects which matter: the warmhearted people there. And what takes their place? A dreadful preoccupation with—the endless ebb and flow of one’s own self. The changes emanating from within which affect only the inside world. It is a splitting apart of the two worlds, inner and outer, so that neither registers on the other. Both still exist, but each goes its own way.

Insanity—to have to construct a picture of one’s life, by making inquiries of others.

“Truth always amuses the ignorant,” Helio said.