Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security.

Man’s collective mastery of nature— even if we could ignore the mounting evidence that this too is largely an illusion— can hardly be expected to confer a sense of confidence and well- being when it coexists with centralizing forces that have deprived individuals of any mastery over the concrete, immediate conditions of their existence. The collective control allegedly conferred by science is an abstraction that has little resonance in everyday life.

Parents accept their obsolescence with the best grace they can muster. . . they do all they can to make it easy for the younger generation to surpass the older while secretly dreading the rejection that follows.

I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament.