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20 Agnosticism Because nobody knows, he stands at the trailhead watching a hawk torture a pigeon against the empty sky. The pigeon is a dumb, lumbering thing. The hawk will kill it with an exquisite slowness that is the luxury of power. It is not possible to hope the pigeon will win: it cannot win, but he cannot even want it to, such a rat with wings: And there is the first failure of empathy. It is not enough to say the hawk prevails because it is beautiful. It prevails because it is swift and merciless, and nature has made certain we regard the swift and merciless as beautiful. But already the sky has emptied. Thought is so slow, so torturous that the stain it makes in desert sunlight lingers After the talon strikes and the aura vanishes. ...

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