Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you grow flowers for a living, and suddenly you inherit a chain of supermarkets. You have no interest in supermarkets and know nothing about them. You’d be quite content to collect the considerable profits every so often and spend them as you see fit, whilst continuing to devote your days to growing flowers, which is your main interest in life. However, the moment comes when you’re seized by curiosity, or perhaps by fear. Since you know nothing about supermarkets, you could easily be exploited, robbed or deceived by the people running the businesses that legally belong to you. Or perhaps it just gives you a strange feeling, collecting all that money as if it’s growing on trees, and you think you ought to do something in return. Whatever it is, you gradually take more of an interest in the business, and suddenly you’re completely absorbed in a mass of information that your brain needs to process: organisational diagrams, recruitment of personnel, the legs of the cashiers in their nylon tights, the price of tea leaves and toothpaste, the names and surnames of your immediate colleagues, etc. Little by little, you realise you actually find it interesting, and that after all, it’s not without its creative side. Ideas occur to you, and you start experimenting with this, that and the other. You find that making certain intelligent changes allows you to increase your profits, and that other changes mean you make a loss. The whole thing is turning into a game you can’t stop thinking about, and one day you realise you’ve completely abandoned the flowers. You think about them rather wistfully, and even a little guiltily, because you feel like you’re betraying your true calling in life. However, you’re trapped in a system, and although no one’s stopping you leaving, you can’t do it. You’ve probably become addicted to the intense cerebral activity, so different to the leisurely activity of growing flowers. Your whole life has changed beyond recognition. You’re not the person you used to be, but neither are you anyone else. You feel possessed by a conflict, or inhabited by something slightly alien to you.