We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound.

— Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Known as Hanlon’s Razer

Attributed to Robert J. Hanlon

…from the standpoint of the incompleteness of reality, we can even make a step further and claim that, at the very bottom, there is all the room we want, since there is nothing else there, just the void.

—Slavoj Zizek,  Less Than Nothing

And yet . . .

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space”

William Shakespeare “Hamlet”

Is it just the very nature of humans to live in denial until reality, randomly and without malice, punches us in the nose?