With trembling fingers I unwrapped a lozenge of equaniminine from my pocket, swallowed it whole and said: "That's all very well, but speak more to the point if you please." He raised an eyebrow, nodded silently, opened the drawer and took out something, which he ate, then said: "As you wish. I was describing the model T of our new technology--that is, the primitive beginnings. Crowbar solutions. The people took to the flagellations and defenestrations at once, it was felicitas per extractionem pedum, but the concepetion was too narrow, the possibilities quickly exhausted, and the novelty soon wore off. What could you do, there simply weren't enough ideas, and no examples, no precedents to follow! For in history only good had been practiced in the open, while evil was indulged in its guise, that is under accepted pretexts--pillaging, ravaging and desecrating in the name of higher ideals. And evil on the private level had to do without even those guiding lights. The illicit, then, was always crude, clumsy, slapdash, to which the public reaction to our product bore ample testimony--in the orders that came flooding in, the same thing was repeated ad nauseam: to seize, strangle and flee. Such was the force of tradition. Also, the opportunity for evil in itself does not suffice; people need a rationale as well. Consider how unpleasant, how awkward it must be when your neighbor, catching his breath (and that can happen anytime), screams, `Why?'--or, `Aren't you ashamed?!' It's embarrassing to stand there without a ready answer. A crowbar makes a poor rebuttal, everybody senses that. The whole trick lies in having the proper grounds to brush aside such aggravating objections. Contemptuously. Everyone wants to commit a villainy without having to feel like a villain. Revenge provides a good excuse--but what did Joan of Arc ever do to you? Is her only offence in being brighter, better? Then you are worse, crowbar or no. And that no one desires! We all would like to perpetrate the most despicable, vicious crimes, and yet remain noble throughout, wonderful! Simply magnificent! Who doesn't want to be magnificent? It's always that way. The worse they are, the more magnificence. The very impossibility of it whets the appetite. Our client isn't satisfied with tormenting widows and orphans--he must bask in the glow of his own righteousness besides. A criminal himself (though, mind you, fully justified and exonerated), he has no wish to associate with criminals. But this, so far, is old hat, a tedious commonplace. No, you must give the client nothing less than sainthood, you must make of him a veritable angel, and in such a way, that he gratifies his lusts with the feeling that it is not only permitted, but actually his duty, a sort of sacred trust. Do you understand what a great art this is, to reconcile such unreconcilables? In the final analysis we are dealing not with the body, but with the soul. The body is merely the means to an end. He who does not realize that will go no farther than the butcher's block and blood sausage. Of course many of our customers are indeed unable to make this kind of distiniction. For them we have the department of Dr. Hopkins--Assault and Battery, Sacred and Profane. Sacred? Well, you know, the Valley of Jehoshapthat, where the devils make off with everyone except our client, and then on Judgment Day the Lord God Himself personally escorts him into Glory. With deference, even. A few--but this is the snobbism of an idiot--demand that God, at the end, offer to switch places with them. Infantile. The Americans, though, do seem to go in for that sort of thing. These bludgies and cudgeloriums," he said, waving the heavy catalog with distaste, "it's sheer savagery. One's fellow man, after all, is not a drum to pound on, but a subtle instrument!" -Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress, 1974