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In his business, the vulnerability that trust required was anathema. It was a target painted on your back, a point of leverage others wouldn’t hesitate to exploit. He knew, because he exploited people for a living. Ambition did not tolerate exposure.
It was always there in the periphery, the low murmur of the entirety of human culture, as present and comforting as the sound of waves from inside a beach house. A vast, pulsing constellation of voices, information, art, commentary, and
dramas, distilled through the algorithmic sieve to the intimately relevant personal feed. So second nature that it was obvious only now, in its absence.
Like memory, history was synthetic. Humans thought of both as factual records, but study after study confirmed
that they were more like dreams, narratives constructed and reconstructed by the mind to fit the demands of the present, not the reality of the past.
Joy was nothing but a cursory peak on the sine wave of life.
It’s like gardening, only they’re cultivating ideology. Clever as fuck, if you ask me.”
“Humanity is more important than any one person,” she said. “No,” he said. “How we treat people defines humanity.”
Ends and means didn’t justify one another—they were two sides of the same coin.
The way you looked at the world manifested what you saw in it.
