The author presents two options: think you’re above politics, or practice it. I admit that, when I was younger, I did believe the first for a while, but what it progressed to was an option C: accept that politics, in some form, is necessary and affects me, then choose to spend as much of my life as possible on other things. If politics is necessary then boy is farming necessary, yet I’m not a farmer. Medicine is necessary, yet I’m not a doctor; defense is necessary, yet I’m not a soldier. These jobs are entrusted to others. We live in a highly specialized society, with which comes the gift of being free to choose beautiful things to feed our limited life energy to, and the curse of being ineffectual in any area we sacrifice little for. Because we’ll be consistently outperformed by those who give more to that area, and less to every other endeavor and principle.

Sometimes, in both workplaces and countries, we enter a state in which we’re forced to feed more of ourselves to the beast. The state’s name is desperation. It’s a tragic state, like reversion to a society in which we spend all our time finding food. People in such a state can’t create science or art.