Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb--that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully... which only reinforces that particular Lie.
Interpretation
The quote critiques a fatalistic worldview that encourages inaction and despair.
Philip K. Dick's quote highlights the danger of a mindset that promotes hopelessness and resignation to a flawed world. By choosing to believe in such a 'Lie,' individuals not only contribute to their own suffering but also perpetuate a cycle of negativity that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It emphasizes the importance of action and resistance against despair as a means to create change and challenge the narrative of hopelessness.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming adversity, this quote can emphasize the importance of action.
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 word 'innocence' means a mind that is incapable of being hurt.
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.
It looks a lot better from up here than it does down there, dont it? Yes. It does. There's a lot of things look better at a distance. Yeah? I think so. I guess there are. The life you've lived, for one. Yeah. Maybe what of it you aint lived yet, too.
I felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me.
What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
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