"For the last two centuries, in order to escape from the labyrinth of mediocrity, we have believed ourselves capable of radically transforming man and society. The philosophy of Progress has promised us since Condorcet to eliminate war, disease, and need, and various ideologies have announced a “radiant future”. We have just come to the realization – via the revelation of human disasters in the East, and here through the reappearance of poverty, illiteracy, war, and epidemics – that these hopes were in vain. We have fallen back down to earth where we must re-appropriate our human condition. But along the way we have lost the key of understanding, and we no longer recognize this mediocre world, nor do we know its meaning."
I sincerely hope her conclusion is correct as well
The man described by Kierkegaard, who builds a sumptuous castle and then lives in the gatekeeper’s quarters, or even in the doghouse, will some day gather about himself all that remains of his clairvoyance, and will draw up the plans for a house of truly human proportions. The children of Icarus will no longer demand bread, as they did two centuries ago, nor dreams, as they did a century later, but rather truth, which represents the only foundation upon which an ethics no one can do without can be built. For no one can seek the good without defining it. All hope is built upon knowledge. And no society can respect a man of whose particularities it is ignorant. Our main exigence is today to meditate about anthropology.
Toward the end of her dissection she concludes that we ought to be watchful. Vigilance from moment to moment to always choose the good.