The Bore Atom

The Law of Least Hassles governs the human mind: our ideas spontaneously trend towards the least energetic state. Thus the easiest thing to believe is that the way we do things is obviously just and good, and that’s where most us are at most of the time. By absorbing one tiny photon, possibly from an old Star Trek episode, advanced middlebrow thinkers get excited and discover that all received ideas and customary practices are nothing more than the prejudices and habits of the tribe and can be anything whatsoever, at least in the later episodes. A corollary of this bit of mental physics is the rule that all Americans eventually turn every philosophical system into cultural relativism just as the body always breaks down proteins into urea.