But they are also constituencies with families to feed, jobs to protect, a stake in the future, a yearning for respect.
So much about New York resonates at once forward and backward in time – and that's of course one of the main things that makes Caleb Carr's work so captivating: the inter-penetration in it of past, present and future – the yearning in it to reach back in time, ideally to the beginning, to find those moments where the future was being born.
In a way, it is torn between its past and its future: it still yearns for cultural homogeneity, but will in fact need more immigrants, particularly highly skilled ones, to make up for its low birth rate and to keep its economy competitive.It is the "legacy of romanticism", in the words of Dieter Oberndörfer, a political scientist at Freiburg University, that holds Germany back.
Nevertheless, as Kay sat in the hospital, reflecting on her past and a future unknown, she yearned for greater meaning and purpose.
In these times of turmoil, two forces will shape the future: the people's yearning for democracy and the region's changing demographics.
But they're in the margins". To stay upbeat, you could call this a positive extrapolation about France's future, reflecting voters' genuine yearning that the cycle of French decline and political charade end soon.
Who knew the future of TV would mean yearning for the days of ads and bundles?
I recognise the emotion that Bowie described of his time in Berlin, "a sense of yearning for a future that we all knew would never come to pass".
And yet it's strange: I can't help feeling a flicker of melancholy while reading Profiles of the Future, a tiny pulse of yearning, like the fading echo of a collapsed star in deep space.
Their topics suggest a yearning for a future sanctuary from the past, but they insist this isn't because they're "sci-fi" - it's more about their songs' human core.
