This remains a place of grinding poverty. Misguided aid efforts had flooded the area with cheap Western clothes, and local crooks had use them to und… - Stephen Baxter

Try to remember this lesson. It might keep you alive a little longer. The most precious thing to a human being is a mind-set: more precious than one’s own life, even. Human history has taught us that lesson time and again, with its endless parade of wars—human sacrifices en masse—thousands of deaths over the most trivial of differences of religious interpretation.

I think we’ve all become desensitized to the state of our world.
We live in a closed economy, an economy of limits. Grain yields globally have been falling since 1984, fishing yields since 1990. And yet the human population continues to grow. This is the stark reality of the years to come.

It was a ploy, Jaar. I was trying to manipulate you, to get you to fight, to make you do what I wanted you to do."
"I know that." He smiled. "Of course I know that. But the motives behind your words don't reduce their truth. Don't you see that?