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Living, eating, reproducing, fulfilling the task for which we were born, and dying: it has no meaning, true, but that's the way things are. People are so arrogant, thinking they can coerce nature, escape their destiny of little biological things...and yet they remain so blind to the cruelty or violence of their own way of living, loving, reproducing and making war on their fellow human beings...

Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking there's anything divine about our animal nature. THis is the only way we will ever feel that we have ben doing something constructive when death comes to get us. Freedom, choice, will, and so on? Chimeras. We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.

- The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery