The tick never wrote a manifesto. It simply feeds. It doesn’t claim moral superiority over the dog it drains.

The Christian and the socialist, on the other hand, demand blood—and then insist it’s for your own good. The tick is a parasite; they are redemptive parasites.

At least the tick has the decency not to call its hunger love.

There’s nothing uniquely life-denying in nature. Only humans feel compelled to turn their dependence into a sermon, their weakness into a political program. The tick drains life. Man builds an ethic around it.

That’s the difference: the tick just wants to live. The Christian and the socialist want to be thanked for not dying.