“ For the record, I’d like to live in an America in which I could leave my door unlocked all the time; in which I could walk wherever I wanted at night; in which we all took each other on faith; in which there were fewer people and more trees, a wild America like Canada; an America in which I could believe what the President said; in which women’s bodies were their own business; in which electrical power consumption diminished every year, in which automobiles were banned from our cities and televisions and chain stores were banned everywhere; in which knowingly failing to help a stranger in an emergency would be punished by death, in which people collected experiences instead of things; in which everyone died at home, not in a hospital, in which everything was sexual and nothing was pornographic, in which beautiful words were second in importance only to beautiful deeds and beautiful souls, in which we all made use of what we already had. ”

William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down Vol 1.