“Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;
Too close immediacy an exhaustion”

New York Times (27 July 1980)

"John Rivers" in The Genius and the Goddess (1955)
Source: The Genius And The Goddess

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 7, “What Is to Be Done?” (p. 395)

Book V, ch. 1
The History of Tom Jones (1749)

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 10 (p. 82)

Variant: The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called Denial.
Source: Inferno

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 1 "The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism"
Context: The view which sees in every capitalist only a profit machine may very well meet the demands of propaganda, but it is conceived much too narrowly and does not correspond to reality. Even in modern giant capitalism the power-political interests frequently play a larger part than the purely economic considerations, although it is difficult to separate them from each other... The morbid desire to make millions of men submissive to a definite will and to force whole empires into courses which are useful to the secret purposes of small minorities, is frequently more evident in the typical representatives of modern capitalism than are purely economic considerations or the prospect of greater material profit. The desire to heap up ever increasing profits today no longer satisfies the demands of the great capitalistic oligarchies. Every one of its members knows what enormous power the possession of great wealth places in the hands of the individual and the caste to which he belongs. This knowledge gives a tempting incentive and creates that typical consciousness of mastery whose consequences are frequently more destructive than the facts of monopoly itself.