Sooner or later on this journey, every traveller faces the same question: Are you a human intending to be a god, or a god pretending to be human?

In absence of consciousness, human beings would merely be animated material objects. Without the synergistic impact of consciousness, free will, and perception of a cohesive self, which act to direct human conduct, many of the qualities that we associate with our humanness would be moot or superfluous delusions including laughter and pain, memories and thoughts, love and anger, imagination and dreams. Without consciousness and free will, humankind would lack the ability to choose right from wrong and there could be no mental discipline directing each person__ lifestyle, attitudes, and belief systems.

When we teach people that suspending moral judgments is a virtue, the necessary outcome is moral horror.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man's devotion to political illusion and self-destruction.

You're on your own little quest, an there's a bit of Frodo Baggins in you, and a bit of Verne's Paganel, and just a tiny drop of Robinson Cursoe, and a smidgeon of Radishchev.

Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.