...proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence.

Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.

The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God's will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, the end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they'll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behing-their-own-eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers ... angels, they don't have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent.

Something strange has happened to the idea of privacy in our surreal time. Instead of being cherished, it appears to have become, a valueless quality — actually undesirable. If a thing is not made public, it doesn’t really exist. Your dog, your wedding, your beach, your baby, your dinner, the interesting meme you recently saw — these things need, on a daily basis, to be shared. Where <i>attention</i> has become the thing most hungered for, where the quest for <i>followers</i> and <i>likes</i> is the new gluttony, privacy has become unnecessary, unwanted, even absurd.