It could <i>always</i> all be unreal - how could you ever tell otherwise? You took it on trust, in part because what would be the point of doing anyt… - Iain Banks

It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting—corruption and favoritism, mostly—endemic to the system.

But did that mean that the urge to live was the result of some sort of illusion? Was the reality, in fact, that nothing mattered and people were fools to think that anything did? Were the choices either despair, the rejection of reason for some idiot faith, or a sort of defensive solipsism?

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.