The world is a disgusting place. The world is the thousands of screams of dead or dying meat. The world is maggots gnawing at any hint of tenderness. The world is the descent of locusts on a bountiful harvest. The world is bile and hate and suffering.

But we are not the world. We, those of us who even bother thinking about these things, are sculptors. We don't need to see the world around us, we don't need to care about anything outside of our sculpture. All we need to do, all we can do, is build the vision of ourselves and make it invulnerable to the world around us. We are the statue and the sculptor. We are monoliths of marble that we have crafted into beacons of beauty and civility, so what kind of monolith is broken by the fetid shit and rotted meat that makes up the rest of the world?

Your hypothetical person does not realize yet that all he can do is make the statue. He keeps playing in the sewage of life, making what will ultimately be taken from him. He does not yet realize that the only thing he can make is himself, and the only thing he can make himself is invulnerable. Outside of him, there is nothing.