“Tally-When you looked around at everyone else how come you didn’t notice they were brain damaged?Az - We didn’t have much to compare our fellow citizens with. Only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people, more engaged, but that was hardly a surprise.History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation there were wars and mass hatred and clear cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn’t a far cry from how humanity was in the rusty era. These days we’re just a bit easier to manage.”

“Seemed like no matter how much money people had, they were desperate to have more, desperate to look good compared to everyone else. Why bother to impress when all anyone else cared about was how impressive THEY were?”

“History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep.”

“That people were manifold creatures didn’t come as a surprise to the Swede, even if it was a bit of a shock to realize it anew when someone let you down. What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for”

“Why do we love to grind our axes so much? How does schlepping that heavy load of medieval weaponry around affect those we encounter in our daily routines? What if it makes us more likely to provoke others?What is so appealing about grinding our axes anyway? Why is it so difficult to stop? How would we interact with people differently if we didn’t do it?What other tools might we cultivate if most of us were willing to lay down our axes, even just for a little while? How much more energy might we have if we weren’t so encumbered?What would you do with that energy?”

“If you became blind," I said, "if you were used to finding your way around a house and then, suddenly, one day had an accident--was attacked or something--and became blind, only then would you actually notice the furniture. It would always have been there, but you would never have been aware of it, you would just have gone around it. Only when something becomes hard to cope with do you see it. That's how you become aware of time--when it becomes hard to cope with.”