A heretic who recanted was made to embroider a bundle of sticks (a faggot) to their sleeve in reminder of the fire they had escaped and may yet suffer. The term once used against argumentative women is now used as a pejorative against homosexuals, the other targeted practitioners of non-reproductive sex.
Psychologists and philosophers created a world where anxiety, fear and struggle are the norm, where happiness and peace are impossible to attain or available only to the most adept after long torment, and where existence is, above all, futile. In this world, people must constantly struggle with and repress what is supposedly their true nature for an end that is, at best, an abstract morality. Any outside assistance is impossible as all interpersonal interactions are also a continual existential struggle. Every outside person can only be the subject or the subjugated in this world, and all love is simply object desire. Existence here has no joy, no connection and no purpose. The happy ending is death.