No value is higher than self-esteem, but you’ve invested it in counterfeit
securities—and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced
to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The
grim joke is on you: that need of self-esteem, which you’re unable to explain
or to define, belongs to my morality, not yours; it’s the objective token of
my code, it is my proof within your own soul.