Pointless Aesthetics - Atlas Lyrics

Tell me the value of selfishness
Use another word "self-esteem"
The value of selfishness is that you esteem yourself as a value
That you live according to your nature
Which means by the judgement of your own mind
You respect your own ability to do the right thing
Therefore you respect the possibility of being a morally virtuous person
And you regard yourself as a value worth preserving.
Let me bring it down from Kant a little bit to a bromide
That I have drummed into me as a child and maybe you've heard it
"Happiness comes from making other people happy"
Oh, yes i have heard, who hasn't heard it? And that's the trouble
Let's aim for the day where people will not hear it anymore
Because it isn't true, it isn't justifiable, and the first question you would have to ask is... why?

You say I'm wasting away my life
Creating a substance while you get high
And like Atlas my shoulder's gave out
I can't lift the world and carry doubt
You ask me to analyze
Everything about myself that I despise
It's hard to think of it
Your mind soul and body in a bottomless pit

You've asked me to jump through hoops
For the sole purpose of entertaining you
Like Icarus I've flown too close
The glue in my wings now exposed
And you there harsh as the sun
Denied me of all my fun
I've lost love in what I play
I hope I can gain it back someday

Before we started to resent each other
There was a time I did love you
But I was never really thruthful to myself
Loving a fantasized, romanticized version
You wanted me to be someone else
But I guess I'm a hypocrite because I asked you to do the same