If so many people are seeking mood-altering experiences, what does that say about a society?

[woo me with science]

16. Good post.

You're right. It's harder and harder to find real-life places to escape to that are pleasant. The one percent have deliberately planned a society built around buying and selling and designed to steer and funnel us into the purchasing places. In our city, there used to be more public parks with free places to walk in nature, play tennis or sports, sit on the water, visit gardens, or hike. Most of that is gone now, replaced by shopping centers and man-made recreation places that require people to pay.

Our environment is built to steer us away from each other, away from conversation, away from play (except purchased play), away from nature, and into spending money.

Noam Chomsky wrote:

"...The other one is not discussed so much, but I think it’s pretty important. This is an extremely atomized society. People are alone. It’s a very business-run society. The very explicit goal of the business world is to create a social order in which the basic social unit is you and your television set, in which you’re watching ads and going out to purchase commodities. There are tremendous efforts made, that have been going on for a century and a half, to try to induce this kind of consciousness and social order."

Noam gets it.

(See entire post by limpyhobbler in Good Reads: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=19730)