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This was well written and definitely insightful. Allow me to mirror with an equally broad interpretation. I am however, much less eloquent, hopefully my ideas will make it through my torturous use of the English language.
Your conception of Terry Pratchett as this ex-theist, now atheist author, angry, shaking his fist into the sky at the injustice of existence. Wishing such a god of his youth would exist, so that he could to be taken to task for the cruelly of the world, is pretty close. But I think your view misses a core piece, though I think you touch on the penumbra's of it. Pratchett is at his core a cynical humanist. He might rage against the absence of the divine but he more rages against the follies of mankind.
One of those follies, is our penchant for delusion. We lie to ourselves a lot. We delude our selves into believing we are nobler, better, purer than we are. We divide ourselves along arbitrary boundaries, other each other, create monsters in the guise of man and justify it with copious amounts of bullshit. We call upon gods of every shape, size, and creed to justify our actions, our lies. We pretend the world is complex and complicated, that there is so much grey.
In this vein, Pratchett positions himself as the magnifying glass, the pickaxe. He does what many comedians of the more cynical bent do. He pulls at that edifice of delusions. He constructs fantastical worlds that at the same time mirror our own, and he uses them to speak truth about the human condition. Sure there is that anger you see, but there is also an unburdening, a liberation to the authentic human experience. I agree Pratchett might have favorites characters like Carrot, and that he really speaks through characters like Sam Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, Havelock Vetinari, and Death. But those characters all to a tee, see through the delusions of mankind.
In a different psychology profile of a section of readers, put yourself in the shoes of a young high-functioning Autist, of agnostic religious belief. Your world is one of lies, people say one thing and mean another. Everyone is constantly claiming this or that faith or creed is perfect, but not that piece of it, that gospel, that word, the "situations" is different, the rules need to be bent, "stop trying to make everything so simple", "can't you see the world is more complex", "stop being so rigid". But in comes fantasy literature. At first: Tolkien & Lewis, their worlds are so much more pure, the good, are noble and good. Evil is bad. The world is black and white, and simple. Complex in its expansive history, its cohesive world, but fundamentally an honest world, full of wonder, and symbolism. More than enough for your extreme pattern-recognizing brain to fall in love with. Then Adams, with his absurdism, you can't help but relate because the real world is so absurd, there is so much bullshit, so much fakery trying to dress itself up. Then you discover Pratchett, cynical, humorous Pratchett. Nobody in Narnia or Middle earth pretends the world is more complicated. Sauron never tries to sell you the "its complicated" argument, Aragon isn't genociding Haradrim while acting like he's a noble king. Gondor's economic policy is not discussed. Discworld however feels closer to reality, it feels more representative of the IRL delusions. And Pratchett peels back the curtain, shows that yes, even the more "complex" world really is simple. In that sense, the fantasy is realer, it requires less make-believe, less suspension of belief, but is still full of wonder and whimsey. It helps that Pratchett is clever and funny.
Of course then in my case, I went onto the darker side, AGoT, Black Company, Malazan, Gene Wolfe, R. Scott Bakker. They help kill the child and prepare you for the cold reality of adulthood in a world filled with the nasty little monsters we call humans.
But the "atom of justice" quote from this lens is not about making our own justice in the world, or even that they train us to believe the impossible in the empty world. It's about the epistemological idea that not all lies, all delusions are bad. There are very real, very important things, to mankind that are not elementary particles. Collective ideas that we have dreamed up. That are core to what makes us human. The unfiltered truth of reality is not some moral bedrock that should be aspired to. It should go without saying, but in case it doesn't, people might not literally believe that justice comes in atoms but they absolutely believe in concepts that don't actually exist in physical reality and they treat denial of those, very not true things, as massively transgressive. So young Autistic child, be less like the Auditors, and more like Death. It is to me, a wonderful expose on how flawed humanity is, how there is beauty in that flaw, and how that flaw is what makes humans, humans.
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