I suppose, all told, I’ve done more good than evil in my life, but that’s incidental, a product of happenstance and the bizarre caprices of the world. - David Brin

Each of us remains convinced that our own subjective viewpoint is more urgent than anyone else's—indeed, even more valid than the objective matrix that underlies so-called reality. After all, the subjective view is a grand theater. To be hero of an ongoing drama. It's why ideologies and bigotries survive against all evidence or logic.
Subjective obstinacy had advantages, Morris, when we were busy evolving into nature's champion egotists. It led to human mastery over the planet…and to our species nearly wiping itself out.

One of life’s joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.

Some molecules were stable. . . . These became letters in a new alphabet.
They, too, reacted to form still larger clusters, a few of which survived and accrued. . . . the first genetic words.