[C]ontradictions are culture’s engines, responsible for... creativity and dynamism... Just as... clashing… — Yuval Noah Harari

[P]erhaps happiness is synchronising... personal delusions.. with... prevailing collective delusions.

We have... increased food production, built cities, established empires and created... trade networks. But did we decrease... suffering..? ...[M]assive increases in human power did not necessarily improve the well-being of individual Sapiens, and usually caused immense misery to other animals.

How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? ...[N]ever admit that the order is imagined.