Ever feel powerless? A clog in a churning machinery that would behave the same way with or without you? Hannah Arendt, the German-Jewish philosopher, thinks you are misunderstanding what it means to be human, hence to be you. For Arendt, the future is unpredictable because human beings are unpredictable. Human beings are unpredictable because we can choose, at any moment, to act otherwise and by doing so affect others so much that great changes can occur. We are not to see ourselves as atoms but as elements in a complex social system where courageous and free can “insert” themselves into the world.
