I am thinking of consumerism, and of many of the social patterns that exist today in America and in the West (and not only in the West, but across much of the globe), which are shaped both tacitly and explicitly by those engines of business and government that are built on models of profit, regulation, and authority that may not be intrinsically ‘bad,’ but that are fated to become impersonal and despotic once they reach a certain scope. But I am thinking, as well, about our willingness to react to those things, when we observe their failings, and deem them unsustainable, with systems or theories that are equally inadequate in their conception of the human person, and of our existential condition.