This is a mournful discovery. 1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the disheartening reality of social agreement and power dynamics.
Philip K. Dick's quote highlights a profound observation about societal norms and beliefs. It suggests that when a majority agrees with a particular viewpoint, it may indicate a collective insanity, while dissenting voices often find themselves marginalized or in opposition to those in power. This serves as a commentary on the nature of reality and human perception, where individual truths can be overshadowed by prevailing ideologies and authoritative structures.
In practice
During a discussion on political ideologies, you might use this quote to illustrate the complexity of social agreement.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present - deja vu.
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.
"Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android."
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can.
In the final analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American people who make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population.
The things of this world take up too much of my time, of which indeed I have too little left, to undertake anything like a reformation in religion.
Right now you can allow yourself to experience a very simple sense of not knowing - not knowing what or who you are, not knowing what this moment is, not knowing anything. If you give yourself this gift of not knowing and you follow it, a vast spaciousness and mysterious openness dawns within you. Relaxing into not knowing is almost like surrendering into a big, comfortable chair; you just fall into a field of possibility.
To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.