Alien Clay

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

“Cognitive dissonance, yes. It’s not enough to be able to do a thing. People, human people, want to be able to believe it’s right to do so. The first thing those in authority do, after they’ve used main force and brutality to take over, is paper over everything with reasons why they were right to do it. Both because it helps you keep people in line if you can get them to believe it, and because it makes it easier to enjoy the spoils of your brutality if you convince yourself you’ve earned it. Human history is full of social conventions designed to salve the consciences of the mighty and curb the ambitions of the small. There’s something in the way humans are wired that means we want to be right by some external measure. So we invent philosophies to tell us we were right to do what we did and we’re allowed to do what we want.

You find a god, basically, who tells you you’re okay. And maybe it’s actual God, because that’s an easy out. God says. Why? If you’re asking that question then you haven’t got faith and you’re out of the God club.”

Just because the tyrant dresses like a clown doesn’t mean he’s funny.

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

Every revolutionary group I ever knew spent far longer clutching for how to describe what they were than talking about what they were going to do.