Now the tired is leaking into each of them and one by one they wind down and grow quiet and stop. Your daughter’s hand is resting lightly on Tidge’s jutting hip and it’s not shrugged off. Her forehead’s smooth, something within her has passed. Tidge sleeps with his arms spread wide and Mouse, the last awake, takes out his notebook, chuckling in wonder at his brother’s trust, still; that magnificent and persistent belief that everything will be all right. Mouse wants it so much. The buoyancy of it, the release.
‘I’ve grown into religion,’ Motl declared towards the end. ‘And you know, Mrs, I’m not sure now that humans can ever, as a species, completely move beyond it. Maybe we’re programmed always to create a spiritual world around us.’
‘Excuse me, Mr, but I happen to think precisely the opposite. Humanity’s growing out of it, my lovely addled love. It’s evolution. Religious people say they’re inspired by faith and certainty — but that puts them in direct conflict with science. And science is winning.’
‘Certainty is dangerous in both science and religion, my lovely addled love. Each one, ultimately, is about uncertainty. In mystery lies the sublime. There are things that can be told and things that will never be told, you have to accept that.’
‘Yeah yeah, yada yada.’
‘Can goodness evolve, do you think?’
‘No. I despair of the world. Well, men‘ You glared and poked him playfully in the ribs. ‘Predation, not parity, is nature’s organising principle. We prey on others. We always have, always will. We thieve land and lives because that’s nature. We’re animals, human animals, the ugliest of the lot. And now I’m knackered. Nigh-night.’
As soon as you hold the view that this is ‘true friction arises; because the opposite view must then be termed ‘false’.