I remember her dragging me once to a rally where the speaker said the media barons were in the pocket of the government, and then a month later to an… - Steve Toltz

Career criminals and philosophers have a surprising amount in common - they are both at odds with society, they both live uncompromisingly by their own rules, and they both make really lousy parent figures.

Look, Jasper," Dad said as we settled on a bench. "It's about time you found out how your grandparents fucked up, so you can work out what you did with the failures of your antecedents: did you run with them or ricochet against their errors, instead making your own huge gaffes in an opposing orbit? We all crawl feebly away from our grandparents' graves with their sad act of dying ringing in our ears, and in our mouths we have the aftertaste of their grossest violation against themselves: the shame of their unlived lives. It's only the steady accumulation of regrets and failures and our shame of our unlived lives that opens the door to understanding them. If by some quirk of fate we led charmed lives, bounding energetically from one masterful success to another, we'd never understand them! never!

Denouncing civilization takes its toll when you continue to exist within it.