They's too much freedom, addiction, fear, and violence blinding us from the truth

Purcell said, "World's changed. Time is come when education, self-improvement don't matter. It's come back to a man's got to know what he's good at. Your history will either help or hinder."

Jarhead waved the smoke from his face and said, "History?"

Purcell said, "Your kin. What they done did hoping to make this world a better place. Things your father and grandfather learned you. How to use your hands. Plant a garden. Hunt. Fish. Fight. What some seem to forget is history is now doomed to repeat itself, seeing as ain't nobody learned from their mistakes. Now no one can stop what has started."

Lost, Jarhead asked, "What's started?"

Purcell told him, "We're at the beginning of a violent era. Jobs are gone. Self worth and moral values have been sold. Some, like Alonzo, even prey on children. Film it, take pictures of it, and sell it. They's too much freedom, addiction, fear, and violence blinding us from the truth."

Jarhead crossed his arms across his chest, convinced that Purcell was fifty-two cards shy of a full deck, and asked "What truth?"

Purcell could read Jarhead's expression, his thoughts. "That things have fallen apart. Everything our kin suffered to build is being disassembled. Criminals run everything now, government, everything. Gangsters the only one seeing any profit. We got no jobs, no money, no power, no nothin', nothin' to live for 'cept vice and indulgence. That's how they control us. But it's falling apart. What we got is our land and our machines, our families, and our ability to protect it all, to keep them alive. We got our hands. Ones who'll survive will be the ones can live from the land. Can wield a gun. Those folks'll fight for what little they've got. They'll surprise the criminals with their own savagery. Man, woman, and child will be tested. Others'll be too weak and scared. Uneducated in common sense. Won't know what's happened. But believe me, war is coming."

 -- Frank Bill, Donnybrook (2013)

'War was serious ... but not that serious.'

People fought in Afghanistan, and people died, but not always in the obvious way. They had been fighting for so long, twenty-three years then, that by the time the Americans arrived the Afghans had developed an elaborate set of rules designed to spare as many fighters as they could. So the war could go on forever. Men fought, men switched sides, men lined up and fought again. War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pickup basketball, a contest among friends, a tournament where you never knew which team you'd be on when the next game got under way. Shirts today, skins tomorrow. On Tuesday, you might be part of a fearsome Taliban regiment, running into a minefield. And on Wednesday you might be manning a checkpoint for some gang of the Northern Alliance. By Thursday you could be back with the Talibs again, holding up your Kalashnikov and promising to wage jihad forever. War was serious in Afghanistan, but not that serious. It was part of everyday life. it was a job. Only the civilians seemed to lose.

—Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (2008)

He covered his life with a veil

Young Adam was always an obedient child. Sometimes in him shrank from violence, from contention, from the silent shrieking tensions that can rip at a house. He contributed to the quiet he wished for by offering no violence, no contention, and to do this he had to retire into secretness, since there is some violence in everyone. He covered his life with a veil of vagueness, while behind his quiet eyes a rich full life went on. This did not protect him from assault but it allowed him an immunity.

—John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952)

Responsibility rests upon recognition

I can hear you say, "What a horrible, irresponsible bastard!" And you're right. I leap to agree with you. I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement. Take the man whom I almost killed: Who was responsible for that near murder-I? I don't think so, and I refuse it. I won't buy it. You can't give it to me. He bumped me, he insulted me. Shouldn't he, for his own personal safety, have recognized my hysteria, my "danger potential"? He, let us say, was lost in a dream world. But didn't he control that dream world-which, alas, is only too real! - and didn't he rule me out of it? And if he had yelled for a policeman, wouldn't I have been taken for the offending one? Yes, yes, yes! Let me agree with you, I was the irresponsible one; for I should have used my knife to protect the higher interests of society. Some day that kind of foolishness will cause us tragic trouble. All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all. But I shirked that responsibility; I became too snarled in the incompatible notions that buzzed within my brain. I was a coward...

-- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1953)