Quicksilver

by Dean Koontz

for there

I have always been an optimist, because pessimists seldom have any fun and usually fret their way into one of the horrible fates they spend their lives worrying about.

Throughout history, whole societies that seemed stable have imploded when self-righteous narcissists, enflamed by insane ideologies, so threatened the larger population of the sane that soon everyone feared to stand against the violence, whereupon madness accelerated. No one seemed to remember the lessons of history—or cared to learn them.

They say that ignorance is bliss. I think ignorance is the mother of extreme behavior, ensuring either a colorless and tedious life or one of passionate commitment to foolishness of one kind or another.

Why aren’t we designed to be unable to harm one another? Why aren’t our brains wired so that we can’t kill or rape or steal or lie or deceive? Why are we formed with the capacity to hate and envy? They say that this world and life in it are a gift, but how can it be a gift when it so often subjects us to fear or even terror, and to unbearable sadness?

When feverish politics and demented ideology entwine, those who are not well anchored to the beliefs that allow a civil society can be swept away, becoming part of the storm of madness that lays waste to everything.

They’re about control. No surer way to control someone than to kill him.”

Those who create in protest against the history of art do not stand on the

shoulders of giants, but on the treacherous ground of their own pretensions. The art in the Oasis tended to be immense, not because the subjects required it, rather because the egos of the artists demanded works of physical enormity.