Pleasure and pride are not, as duty knows,
(Though parsons think them) virtue’s deadliest foes;
The vice which always serves the Devil best
(Perhaps the parson) is self-interest.
“The consumer conformism — “the suburbanization of the soul” — on the one hand and the gathering ecological and other crises on the other do force the individual to recognize that he or she is all he or she has got. And this sharpens the eye and the imagination. The challenge is for each of us to respond, to remake as much as we can of the world around us, because no one else will do it for us. We have to find a core within us and get to work. Don’t worry about worldly rewards. Just get on with it!”
J. G. Ballard | Rolling Stone, 1987