Men are weighed by how much pressure they can stand without buckling under the strain. Their mettle is defined by the quality of their character, their resolve in the face of compromise, and the singular focus they can sustain against the backdrop of incessant distraction. All of nature hopes to seduce him to bend at every moment, for nothing in nature understands the dignity of a straight line. It only knows the virtue of circles and so pulls on a man’s attention to turn his gaze away from the prize before his eyes. This is the law of entropy that flattens mountains into plateaus and seeks to sink them one day into hypnotic depression. As is true above in the outer world, so it is below in the inner one of a man’s psychology. The rules outside apply along the same lines inside, yet modern men, with their minds so foggy and cluttered, cannot see the forest from the trees and so realize their position. Only the rarest and exceptional develop the stubborn qualities that are needed to succeed. Such men cannot help but irritate the mediocre crowd; that amorphous mass of the population that insist he submit and compromise to the hypnotism of the status quo.