“The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a “meaning” and that each of us is unique. One can see that evolving a built-in obscuring mechanism for those depressing and inevitable insights might be of practical use. Okay, maybe in a sense we are unique: the huge numbers of available combinations of traits, propensities, body types, and experiences that make up each of us is unimaginably large. Our variety is immense, but still it must be restricted within certain boundaries or we wouldn’t be able to recognize ourselves as types at all. What we are is somehow simultaneously “infinite,” but always similarly shaped. Almost infinite variety within severely restricted limitations.”
David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries, p. 74
