Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks6/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Worse, they made the whole thing – the great game that was life – appear arbitrary, almost meaningless. Or at the very least, an ancestor had to have worked for it.Īrrogance without cause, arrogance without achievement – or that mistook sheer luck for true achievement – was an abomination. Veppers was all for arrogance – he possessed the quality in full measure himself, as he’d often been informed – but it had to be deserved, you had to have worked for it. Losers who’d made it always let the side down. It was just part of the way things worked – part of the complexity of life, he supposed – that sometimes somebody who absolutely deserved nothing more than to be one of the down-trodden, the oppressed, the dregs of society, lucked out into a position of wealth, power and admiration.Īt least people who were natural winners knew how to carry themselves in their pomp, whether their ascendancy had come through the luck of being born rich and powerful or the luck of being born ambitious and capable. “There was nothing worse, Veppers thought, than a loser who’d made it. ![]()
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