”"Matter itself was dissolving under the scrutiny of science, and yet in our daily lives, we were becoming a race of somnambulists, whose very breathing, in train, and bus and car, was timed to the movement of the wheels; and the more perfectly and even alertly we clicked through our automatic affairs on the surface of things, the more complete was our insensibility to the utterly inscrutable mystery that anything should be in existence at all."-quote from early 20th century/Unflattening