A Reasonable Life

I am reading an inspiring and challenging book at the moment...may I whet your appetite and tell you all about it when I have had time to complete reading it and mulling over all it contains?

Here is an excerpt...

We condemn our children to conformity the moment they leave the womb. And we do so not from unkindness, but because we have thoughtlessly built ourselves a media-propelled society that for the last forty years has bludgeoned us every minute, telling us to forget that we are humans who need to laugh and cry, care and be cared for, love and be loved. It tells us instead that our needs can be fulfilled with storebought goods; that having video games is as good as having friends, that the comfort of your car can replace the comfort of your lover, that caring for a yacht is like caring for your mother, and that new shoes can substitute for a shoulder to cry on.

So we created a scoiety that bloomed economically the farther it pushed us apart, because the lonelier we got the more we shopped to forget our loneliness; a society that reached its apex once it convinced us that bells and whistles, car phones and nintendos can make up for the loss of a passionate human life.

This of course should come as no surprise, since we are a society named not after something noble or humane, but an abstract vulgarity called Capital. We have become conditoned to ignore the growth of the human spirit, or human joy, or at least to practice them in our spare time, and concentrate our efforts on the growth of money. It is somehow thought (if it is thought at all) that happiness, fulfillment, love and laughter will burst upon us as soon as we are adequately awash in a sea of greenbacks.

Mate, Ference (1997) A Reasonable Life pg 142-143
Albatross publishing House