It is strange, is it not, how the more strenuously we deny the importance of race in human affairs, the more obsessed with it and the touchier on the… - Theodore Dalrymple

Mere absurdity has never prevented the triumph of bad ideas, if they accord with easily aroused fantasies of an existence freed of human limitations.

Just imagine what the pattern of taking meals I have described actually means. The child who is subjected to it learns that, in the matter of when and how and what to eat, his appetite and opportunity are the only things he has to consult. Meals for him are not social occasions but nasty, solitary, British and short (and, I might add, frequent). He does not learn that, for the sake of the convenience or wishes of others, he sometimes has to refrain from eating or even to eat when he is not fully hungry. He does not learn to wait till others are served, or to share what food is on the table. He does not learn how to converse. These are very elementary social requirements that he does not acquire.

If consequences are removed from enough actions, then the very concept of human agency evaporates, life itself becomes meaningless, and is thenceforth a vacuum in which people oscillate between boredom and oblivion.