All that we do is lie to ourselves

So the conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the category of the real is ultimately a purely formal category. It's not a category of some formless content disturbing order, it's a pure structural gap. It's an entirely non-substantial category. It's...If we may put it in these terms, it's a difference, but a pure difference. A pure difference in the sense that it's a difference which is paradoxically prior to what it is the difference between. So it's not simplythat we have two terms and there is a difference between the two terms. Paradoxically, the two positive terms appear afterwards as attempts to dominate, cover up the tension etc. of this difference.

-Slavoj Zizek, "The Reality of the Virtual"

The lesson of this is ontological lesson: is: one cannot coincide with itself, pure difference, because of this pure difference as a secondary effect the multitude explodes.

-Slavoj Zizek, "The Reality of the Virtual"

Then may we not sum up the argument in a word and say truly: If one is not, then nothing is?

Certainly.

Let thus much be said; and further let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.

Most true.

- Plato, "Parmenides"