A ‘world’ as I understand it consists of real people who are trying to get things done, largely by getting other people to do things that will assist them in their project….The resulting collective activity is something that perhaps no one wanted, but is the best everyone could get out of this situation, and therefore what they all, in effect, agreed to.
–Sociologist Harold Becker, as quoted by Adam Gopnik in “The Outside Game: How the sociologist Howard Becker studies the conventions of the unconventional,” in the January 12, 2015 New Yorker