" in this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. i mean, these days, character isn’t destiny anymore. economics is destiny. ideology is destiny. bombs are destiny. what does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care how you lived your life? crisis comes, death comes, and your pathetic individual self doesn’t have a thing to do with it, only to suffer the effects.

— salman rushdie, the satanic verses.