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rather a man who is committed to a cause of doubtful justice,
of doubtful merit, a man who is committed to a position that
no matter how he performs he will not be rewarded. And
yet under these conditions performs his duty with merit as
a matter of conscience. And I think the virtue there is the
stronger variety.

In the books we learned that first you can learn to
cope as Ivan did and as eventually the Captain did, and that
you can meet this realization that an educated man must
cope with, the lack of a moral economy in the world, either
with your hat in your hand, as did Job, or with stoic
bravery, as did Dr. Reiux.

Joe Brennan talked about many ways that people have coped
with this realization over time. The early Christians had
trouble with and solved it in general dualism, that is
two Gods, one of darkness, usually Jehovah the Old Testament
[left margin ?] God; one of light, usually the New Testament God. The Old
Testament God was usually attached to matter. That he had
formed the earth of matter and that people were made of
matter and this made matter a bad thing, and it caused trouble
with Christ, who was a man of the earth, and could he have
been matter or was he merely just a shadow of matter? And
there were the Gnostics who were big in the Christian church
from about 200 to 1300 and they caused a lot of trouble.
The Manichees, I think that's another version of it, started

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