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We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves.
The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to
fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is
doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies all these are private and, except
through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the
experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.
Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
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