The most persistent story is the belief that the process is moving toward something. Human beings are remarkably willing to tolerate the present when the future is presented as compensation for it. Progress promises that the next generation will inherit something better. Work promises that effort will eventually be rewarded. Love promises that attachment will produce permanence. Religion promises that suffering will be repaid in another existence. Politics promises that collective action can deliver the society that does not yet exist. Even pessimism can become another promise when it imagines that seeing through all these illusions will produce some final state of liberation.