I was just reading Tom Wolfe on his idea of the "fiction-absolute":
This led me to wonder: do I do this with my stash? Do I look at what I have cellared, and justified it as the best of all possibilities of tobacco that I could have stashed? And if so, what am I missing?Even before I left graduate school I had come to the conclusion that virtually all people live by what I think of as a "fiction-absolute." Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world--so ordained by some almighty force--would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles. Politicians, the rich, the celebrated, become mere types. Does this apply to "the intellectuals" also? Oh, yes. . . perfectly, all too perfectly.