… the life of most human beings since the beginning of time has been mainly taken up with gaining food, shelter and clothing for themselves and their families. What will happen when the Buddenbrooks' dynamics moves another notch forward, and diminishing relative marginal utility sets in, on a mass basis, for real income itself?

Will man fall into secular spiritual stagnation, finding no worthy outlet for the expression of his energies, talents, and instinct to reach for immortality? Will he follow the Americans and reimpose the strenuous life by raising the birth-rate? Will the devil make work for idle hands? Will men learn how to conduct wars with just enough violence to be good sport – and to accelerate capital depreciation – without blowing up the planet? Will the exploration of outer space offer an adequately interesting and expensive outlet for resources and ambitions? Or will man, converted en masse into a suburban version of an eighteenth-century country gentleman, find in some mixture of the equivalent of hunting, shooting and fishing, the life of the mind and the spirit, and the minimum drama of carrying forward the human race, sufficient frontiers to keep for life its savour?