What the precariousness point tells us is that in many cases the very future persons – call them the "A-people" – who endure low wellbeing levels also "owe their very existence" to that act A. Perhaps an act B existed as an alternative for the agents at the time just prior to choice.
The precariousness of the points table meant that for once Scotland's role as the "yes, but by how many?" side was crucial to the outcome.
Momentary as temporariness points to the precariousness of both processes of bio-objectification and the biobanks themselves.
And the final image of his death, slumped across a schoolroom desk, reinforces Mann's point about the precariousness of civilised values.
It acknowledges Kavka's point about the precariousness of any given person's coming into existence: the probability that that identical child will come into existence, given that the agents do anything other than perform the clearly wrong act they in fact perform, is very low.
Rather than the promise of a rational progress toward greater and greater equality, respect for individual difference, and universality, Lacan's insights, like Freud's, point toward the precariousness of identity and social bonds and to the instability of the drives that attach us to one another.
Yet, both Murakami and Ogawa can be said to be making a similar point about the precariousness of things we wish to preserve.
"[The expansion of property guardianship] represents a worrying trend towards temporariness and precariousness in housing contracts", says Dawson, pointing out that guardians can be evicted with two weeks' notice, although in practice it can be even fewer, and are "fairly unequivocally told by guardian companies that they don't have any rights".
This level of precariousness among newly immigrants gains special relevance when compared to that of natives.
It is work of admirable ambition and, indeed, perhaps its chief flaw is that it feels bulky and overloaded, determined not only to make its intellectual points about the allure and precariousness of the penchant for self-invention, but to offer a psychological explanation for it as well.
