I told him to open his eyes, that I didn’t want to kill him with his eyes shut, for God’s sake. - Joanna Russ

The United States is a nation made up of many very different sub-cultures (this is not even mentioning class differences). I have heard talk - largely from middle-aged white men - to the effect that everything used to be so harmonious and people so happy and what happened? - but they don't really want to know. Differences that used to be firmly suppressed in a hierarchy that was sold to all of us as "natural" are now busting out all over. When they take the forms of theory or morals (and even when they don't) it's impossible to argue them away. They exist. The Left (to which I belong) must learn them. We must all learn them. It's time and it's hard to do. I'm trying.

Houses stretched off on all sides, sometimes dipping below the ground and sometimes emerging out of it, piling themselves into pyramids, into almost toppling waves, never one rooftree more than eighty yards from the next. The planet was covered. There were the old, open-air cities planted with whatever would grow, mountains honeycombed, resorts in Antarctica, covered roads crammed with carrier traffic only, hovercraft, sea-craft, masses, structures, and installations under the sea, nets of algae towed in the air, some insects and no animals whatever, but people, people, people everywhere.
What’s the opposite of the Garden of Eden?

When the memory of one's predecessors is buried, the assumption persists that there were none and each generation of women believes itself to be faced with the burden of doing everything for the first time. And if no one ever did it before, if no woman was ever that socially sacred creature, "a great writer," why do we think we can succeed now?