When you’re young and impressionable, the most chiliastic inanities can seem profound, and can go unchallenged for a long time.  That was the lesson I learned upon rereading The Illuminatus! Trilogy after a hiatus of several years.  I’d first been exposed to the book by a friend in my high school years, and for about two years me and the damn thing were inseparable.  I quoted from it incessantly and re-read it cover to cover several times.  Then somewhere around my third year of high school I lost interest and sold off my copy.