"Reflecting on the Second World War, Hannah Arendt suggested that totalitarianism takes root in societies where lots of people feel unnecessary or unwanted."

"After the 2016 election, it was common for the media to report on underemployed people in the Rust Belt who felt that they’d been cast aside. Today, manosphere ideology rages against a society that, allegedly, claims not to need men, and young people wonder whether there’s room for them in an A.I.-saturated workforce. Recently, even world-class mathematicians have felt the sting of redundancy. In a blog post titled 'The Mathocalypse,' the mathematician Scott Aaronson recounts what his nine-year-old son told his wife, the computer scientist Dana Moshkovitz: 'Mommy . . . I heard that a robot solved the math problem you worked on for your whole career!'"

From "Do You Feel Needed? Being necessary has never been more necessary—or more difficult," by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker.