Chess for Beginners.

Trying so hard to pull yourself out of that paradigm when all that's arrived at is just another fractal, an arm of the self replicating beast that you try so doggedly to run from. Different in position and this is where the differences end. How do we get around the bonds of being "right"? This interminable pursuit would claim your life if you weren't watchful. [The conversation with the woman who had never once entertained the idea that she might be wrong about everything.] This idea, this thing labelled "right," (it wears so many masks) will sneak in through the back even, and tell you that what you're actually fighting for is justice, and truth.

Or some other noble virtue.

Examine; examine. Drawing a line around yourself necessarily puts others outside; alienates and chastises. How are we any different from the people who slap yellow magnetic ribbons on their cars, do their christmas shopping in a haze of color and fury and blinking shiny things at Target? What really makes us any different?

Just:
The ability to judge, be pushy, force our beliefs and ideas on everyone we deem divergent, view ourselves as right and everyone else as wrong and ignorant, be loud and antagonistic and bullheaded when met with adversity, push ever closer towards the highest ground on all these islands of ourselves -- the ability to do these things, and then choosing not to.