“Who knows? I mean, that’s the whole point—once they settled on a truth, everything else could be reframed to fit. […] That’s just how the brain works: It wants to shape everything into a narrative. Once you realize that, the whole world starts to make more sense. Or less sense.

[…] There’s this whole reality that people all over the world believe mind, body, and soul and when you trace it back to its origin, you find … nothing at all. Just a story so weird and terrifying that it becomes infectious, with mass media acting as the vector.”

— Ether in Jason Pargin, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, 2024, St. Martin’s Press, Ch. Day 1, p. 121