“The bizarre artifact you call ‘the tie’ which is worn by men has a history you should know. There is a thread that connects all beings. It is the source of intelligence and wonder. The angels have two of these, one that goes ‘inward, to creation’ and another that goes ‘outward, to majesty’. In any case, the humans, filled with a hubris beyond all possible accounting, were upset at their apparent dependence upon this thread. They hated the idea that ‘something above them was informing them’ and so, in an act of childish ignorance nearly too astonishing to contemplate, they ‘cut the cord’, and then tied the remnant around their necks, as if to indicate their ‘liberty’ from authority and majesty. Here’s the problem. Something else took hold of that little physical tail that was meant to represent something far more astonishing that the human reactivity to their own ignorance. In fact, the moment they cut that cord? They were -owned-, inside and out, by forces inchoate and primitive. Not only that, but tying a tourniquet around your neck to indicate your liberty from or transcendence of some vaster power or context is… confused at best, and the results have essentially gone downhill from there. Remove the mind tourniquet; your monkeys are broken.”

— an anonymous informant