Marathe and Steeply: choose your temple (pp. 108–109)

The exact diagnosis of the Entertainment's viewer, arrived at through a debate about love. Steeply proposes that sometimes there's no choice — you just love, helplessly, "the temple comes to Mohammed" — and Marathe answers that this helplessness isn't freedom or tragedy but the meanest bondage there is: "the slave who believes he is free." Strip the romance from the formulation and it describes the man in the recliner precisely — someone who chose nothing, who is held by an attachment he never examined, and who experiences his captivity as pleasure. This is why Marathe fears the Québecers can simply "bring the Entertainment into their warm homes": a people convinced their surrender is freedom will open the door themselves, and call the enslaving master a gift.