THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF BIRTH

For many years, I have looked upon the city beneath me, trying to see how its dark towers and lamp-lit streets could help the voiceless. I performed terrible acts and allowed terrible acts to be done in my name. Worse, the men and women who perform these acts thank me for the privilege, for the moral certainty, for the frames I have given them that absolve all from their cruelty. They thank me though they need not, they thank me because they believe I am the child of a god.

But I am not.

I am not, no, and the terrible truth is that everything my brothers and sisters and I have done has been with a belief in an absolute authority that we do not have.

—Qian, The Godless