"We have sympathized with the misplaced obsessive emotionality you have thrown into your delusional activities.” “What do you mean, ‘delusional’? I k… - Robert Sheckley

They were shunned, and they had reacted to exclusion by exclusiveness.

Although the mystics have left us many ways and means for achieving this enlightened state of mind, few of us ever realise it. It is self-defeating to believe in a method when it does not bring the desired results, not for you nor for anyone you know.
The tool for encountering enlightenment is meditation—a word one usually intones in reverential manner. Meditation purports to do for the mind what organic foods do for the body. It is extremely good for you, although admittedly not as much fun as a good movie. Or even a bad movie.
It is a disarmingly simple practice, but there are difficulties. I have followed an ancient system of counting my breaths. You count up to ten, and then begin again, always focusing on the breath. Unfortunately, I usually lose count and after I’ve lost count a few times I lose interest.
But when I finally do succeed in quieting my mind and achieving a measure of one-pointedness, something very strange happens. I find that I have plugged into my own internal music station. This music system broadcasts in my head continually, interrupted only by spot news flashes from 1951. I don’t even like most of the stuff it dishes up, and the arrangements are uniformly terrible.
So, in my own experience, meditation is just like waiting at an airport, with its piped-in music and meaningless announcements. But with one important difference—in an airport you know that sooner or later you are going to takeoff and fly.
So much for meditation. And so much for backpacking through the inner world.

Strange," he said in a conversational voice, "how, for some men, the possession of a gun acts as a powerful intoxicant. It destroys the reasoning faculties, eh, Carlo?