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So in our timidity, let each of us make a choice: Whether to remain a conscious servant of falsehood (of course, it is not out of inclination, but to feed one’s family, that one raises his children in the spirit of lies). Or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man worthy of respect both by one’s children and contemporaries.
Live Not by Lies
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning. Every society thus is a “religion” whether it thinks so or not: Soviet “religion” and Maoist “religion” are as truly religious as are scientific and consumer “religion,” no matter how much they may try to disguise themselves by omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives.
The Denial of Death
Ernest Becker
“Mr. Rearden,” said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, “if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?” “I . . . don’t know. What . . . could he do? What would you tell him?” “To shrug.”
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