Bullet Train

by Kōtarō Isaka

Probably nothing going on inside, thinks Tangerine. Often the case with people who don’t read fiction. Hollow inside, monochrome, so they can switch gears no problem. They swallow something and forget about it as soon as it goes down their throat. Constitutionally incapable of empathy. These are the people who most need to read, but in most cases it’s already too late.

A man who gets no love from Lady Luck has no choice but to be prepared.

It’s easy to build up your body, but developing emotional resistance is tough. Even when you think you’re calm, it’s almost impossible not to react to the pinprick of malevolence.

Our trust-based society is long gone, if it ever even existed in the first place.

There have been other similar experiments. One of them isolated the optimum pattern for conformist behaviour: when the stakes are high but the question is difficult and the right answer isn’t obvious. When this happens, people are much more likely to adopt someone else’s opinion as their own.

when people have a difficult decision to make, one that may go against their code of ethics, they conform to the group, and even come to believe that the answer is correct.

“I despise that man. For even as the earth splits beneath his feet and rocks tumble down on his head he shows his teeth in a smile. He checks to see his pancake make-up is undisturbed. My scorn becomes a storm, and I devastate this place, because of him.”’

Whether it’s war, genocide, or revisions to the law, in most cases people don’t notice until it’s already happening, and they feel like they would have protested earlier if they only knew.

‘In life, there are things that are said to be right, but there’s no saying if it’s actually right. That’s why the people who can say, This is what’s right, those people have all the power.’

Anything that’s existed for a long time deserves respect. Survival is proof of superiority.

“Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest.” Basically, the most important thing is your own happiness. If you take care of that, it helps everyone else to be happy too.

Dostoevsky would say. In Demons. “I find that crime is no longer insanity, but simply common sense, almost a duty; anyway, a gallant protest. How can we expect a cultured man not to commit a murder, if he is in need of money?” There’s nothing unusual about transgression, he’s saying. It’s completely normal. Which is how I feel too.’