Torn

“This is the paradox of the human self, the mysterious unity of self-centeredness and other-centeredness in all human beings. Even though the two drives go in opposite directions and can never become complementary, they are always combined and their combination binds people inextricably to one another, even as it tears them apart internally and externally. It becomes an endless source of conflicts among entire societies as well as inside each individual. The more divinely self-sufficient we want to be, the more we turn ourselves into our own idol, the more totally we surrender to others the modest degree of autonomy that could be ours, the more we deliver ourselves into the hands of innumerable tyrants” (Girard, A Theater of Envy, p. 147).