As Cioran correctly points out, a principal danger of being overcivilized is that one all to easily relapses, out of sheer exhaustion and the unsatisfied need to be “stimulated,†into a vulgar and passive barbarism. Thus, “the man who unmasks his fictions†through an indiscriminate pursuit of the lucidity that is promoted by modern liberal culture “renounces his own resources and, in a sense, himself. Consequently, he will accept other fictions which will deny him, since they will not have cropped up from his own depth.†There, he concludes, “no man concerned with his own equilibrium may exceed a certain degree of lucidity and analysis.â€
Emil Cioran