The main shortcoming of occultists, generally, and Great Occultists, specifically, is not their desire to remain on stage after the pinnacle of their work, but their insistence to remain after they, themselves, realize that their past is more glorious than the present.
Obesity is to tasty food as healthy weight is to nutritious food. For certain people there is no difference from tasty food is “better” and therefore the truth must also be a source of good feelings. Just as good food is generally bland or unfulling, so too, the truth is also terrible, initially. Not that truth becomes “tasty”, but through time it becomes tolerable.
In the Republic, justice and virtue are frequently discussed together, so that the unsuspecting reader, along with Glaucon, understand that justice and virtue are somehow interdependent. In a similar manner of connectedness, free will and responsibility are conjoined. We note that cause and effect are naturally found together.
Should the Gentle Reader have difficulties with the correct identification of justice and virtue or free will and responsibility or cause and effect, he has recourse to various happenings in the Garden of Delights. Where is justice and virtue? Are they present in a city of speech, but absent in a garden? Does the wording of “ultimate responsibility” clarify or obscure the reader's search? What role does cause and effect have in the garden?
If justice is the interest of the stronger to the detriment of the weaker and choice is the illusion created by those with power, then can it be stated that justice is similar to choice, in so far as control is asserted?
Justice and virtue, free will and responsibility are invariably associated with good and evil. Yet, by moving beyond good and evil, beyond free will and responsibility and beyond justice and virtue, what remains is cause and effect. Of course, power is implicit in cause and effect, as something without power cannot be the cause of action.
Moral people see good and evil in the garden, while others see justice, yet a handful of readers will reason that cause and effect, without either morality or sophistry, is what propels the storyline.
Is one understanding correct, while the other two understandings are incorrect? The answer depends in the standard of value used by the Gentle Reader, although good and evil and justice are near universal conventions, cause and effect is observed in nature. And no one would suggest that Nature is either good or evil, nor would one promote the idea that Nature endorses justice. Therefore, the standard as demonstrated in the garden of delights must be cause and effect.
Ultimately, cause and effect explains not only the Garden of delights, but also clarifies the persistent failures of stranger care. By its nature, stranger care must be the cause of failures of the test subjects, as the failure rate observed in non stranger care approaches, or is similar, to the general population. As Thrasymachus suggests, justice is the interest of the stronger (the state and adults) to the detriment of the weaker (children) and the Merovingian holds to the belief that choice is the illusion created between those who have power ( commentators and sophists) and those who do not (the poor choices made by the victims).