"Whereupon it ocurred me - so it is with everyone. (...) ,so it is with the majority of men day by day and hour by hour in their daily lives and affairs. Without really wanting to at all, they pay calls and carry on conversations, sit out their hours at desks and on office chairs; and it is all compulsory, mechanical and against the grain, and it could all be done or left undone just as well by machines; and indeed it is this never-ceasing machinery that prevents their being, like me, the critics of their own lives and recognizing the stupidity and shalowness, the hopeless tragedy and waste of the lives they lead, and the awfull ambiguity grinning over it all."

Herman Hesse, in Steppenwolf