4 And it may please at least a few of you to know that in Paradise,
5 There will still be a city called aPhiladelphia,
6 Which will be a shining jewel in the bcrown of Harry,
7 And just possibly the Capital of Paradise.
8 cIn Philadelphia, everything will keep on going for a long long time,
9 But its people will become used to decline and decay as a basic fact of life.
10 They will go to work every morning,
11 Just like they do now,
12 And they will get married,
13 And have families,
14 Just like they do now,
15 And they will spend their lives pretty much the same way they do now,
16 Running errands from dawn to dusk,
17 And spending long hours at work meeting deadlines for meaningless fire drills,
18 And fixing the screen door latch,
19 And arranging furtive sexual liaisons,
20 And carting their kids from one organized activity to another,
21 And getting wasted as often as they can,
22 And piling into the car once a year for a three-thousand-mile vacation in the station wagon,
23 A lot like they do now.
24 And truly, there won't be a lot of bliss,
25 In case you thought that's what Harry was promising,
26 Because in spite of Harry's Consolation,
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27 Which will be as abundant as the air we breathe,
28 There will still be fear,
29 And dread,
30 And hatred,
31 And envy,
32 And jealousy,
33 And violence,
34 And all the other things that have always tormented people,
35 From day one.
CHAPTER 101 In Paradise,
2 In fact,
3 People will just be making a simple trade,
4 Exchanging one kind of fear for another.
5 dThey will never experience the terror of confrontation with the brute face of reality, and will therefore never feel its power to overwhelm them with the knowledge of their own einsignificance in the vast randomness of the universe,
6 But in return they will live with a constant low grade fear,
7 Which will never go away,
8 Because they will never confront this fear either,
9 And so they will never learn that this kind of fear is the lifelong companion of the incompetent,
10 Who are always afraid of being found out,
11 Because they know that they don't really know very much,
12 And aren't really trying very hard,
13 And have never really accepted any responsibility for making things work,
14 But only a certain extorted accountability for the things that somebody else put on their list,
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