Beneath all this gaiety and baroque complexity lay the simple and so carefully denied: beyond the thin metal surrounding us was the endless humorless… - Norman Spinrad

Was not the arbitrary distinction between illusion and reality the ultimate illusion itself?

I could not deny that my spirit was amorally attracted to this ultimate temptation as my conscience was morally repelled by it.

True civilization consists precisely of conventions, rituals, and modes of oblique communication whereby the chaos within and the void without may be expressed and contained within the harmonious consensus of shared social objectivity, thus maintaining our bubble of crafted reality, the necessary illusion.