Now we are at the point where all the cards have been laid and the story they chart can be read. We are worse off than we were at the beginning—but this could have been predicted from our starting point. In the beginning, the gods gave us liberty; in the end, we discovered cheating. Instead of developing the capacities within, we took two roads: the delusion and oblivion of drugs—which didn’t start off as cheating, but as access to the sublime; and treating ourselves as objects to be admired—the attempt to make the self into an object of need and desire by tending to the image of our selves.
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