THE REAL FLAW IS NOT COVETOUSNESS OR PRIDE, but
something deeper which underwrites each blessed vice: the delusion that
a human has any agency at all . . . not merely a pawn caught up in a
chess game between demon and deity or an arbitrary atomclap in the
physicists mad, determinist trap, but presumes self an entity that ever
had a choice to make in the first--or any--place. Whereas the fact of
the matter is he was sold or saved before even taking to mind the
pricked digit, the dotted line. As such, he was bought before even "he"
was a "mind". As a matter of fact, he was paid for before Mind.
First, there is a mountain. Then there is no mountain. Then
there is.
The above applies to all acts, even actions
outrageously more banal than soul-selling or stage-strutting: the
inevitable coursing of your eye over this line, the selection of the
next link. Decided for you from the start. No control.
A card
punched zero or one or on or off, all that remained was for it to be fed
into the machine. Itself an illusion, and as for its business . . . [BLIP!]