My ability not to be swayed by any feeling is nothing more than this order: analysis first, then feeling.

 People assimilated into society are reactive because they lack the capacity to generate philosophy. When they feel an emotion, instead of carrying it, they immediately become it. For instance, if they are angry, their eyes roll back and they see nothing. Or if they are sad, they fall into a permanent gloom. Rather than experiencing pain, they become the pain itself. And when that happens, because they usually view pain as something negative, they do something to eliminate it: having become pain itself, they destroy themselves. Because in them, feeling comes before analysis; they live without thinking and so only think about something after they’ve experienced it—which, in most cases, doesn’t even happen at all. They just live like plants, unconsciously. My ability not to be swayed by any feeling is nothing more than this order being reversed: analysis first, then feeling. I can narrate my own collapse because I can look at myself from such a distance—not physically, not even mentally, but existentially. Because in truth I am not at all important or special. Accordingly, I am not trapped within myself. But contemporary people, because of both the internal desire and the external pressure to be “indispensable,” become trapped inside themselves.