“First, this passage from Hannah Arendt’s 1958 Human Condition, which my father bought in the early sixties: This future man, whom scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.”
“Or how about this embarrassingly utopian vision from Marcuse’s 1964 One-Dimensional Man (purchased in 1968): Thus economic freedom would mean freedom from the economy—from being controlled by economic forces and relationships; freedom from the daily struggle for existence, from earning a living. Political freedom would mean liberation of the individuals from politics over which they have no effective control … The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of their utopian character, but of the strength of the forces which prevent their realization.”