This done, Adler can say that young crit ics of “the System” are not true revolutionaries. Real revolutionaries work within the System — since the System is the Revolution.

All the dreams you show up in are not your own.

As regime after regime fell, the world watched transfixed, glued to the social media feeds of thousands of young people from the region who had taken to tweeting, streaming, and reporting from the ground.

The kids at the record company are very enthusiastic, and they have a lot of friends they have made, and they all want to have an interview, and the only problem is they’re asking the same things people asked me a long, long time ago, because that’s what they do when they’re starting—you ask questions you already know the answer to. I don’t want to disappoint them, but you can’t disappoint unless you have an appointment. They don’t know I only like to talk to people who have something to talk about other than me. Like everybody in New York, they know everything. How can you tell them anything?”

A philosopher might miss appointments, but so might someone with a propane torch in his apartment, even if he is a philosopher.