Many minds
do seem moonstruck, however, blissfully unaware of the crisis—especially the
“intellectuals,” who are supposed to be the most on top of current events. I
was dumbfounded to read a cover article in Time devoted to the question:
Why is everything getting better? Why is life so good today? Why does everybody
feel so satisfied about the quality of life? Time never questioned the
assumption, it just wondered why the music on the Titanic sounded so nice.
It turned
out, on reading the article, that every single aspect of life that was
mentioned, every single reason for life getting better, was economic.. People
are richer. End of discussion.
Perhaps Time
is just Playboy with clothes on. For one kind of playboy, the world is
one great big whorehouse. For another kind, it’s one great big piggy bank. For
both, things are getting better and better.
There is a
scientific refutation of the Pig Philosophy: the statistical fact that suicide,
the most in-your-face index of unhappiness, is directly proportionate to
wealth. The richer you are, the richer your family is, and the richer your
country is, the more likely it is that you will find life so good that you will
choose to blow your brains apart.
Suicide among pre-adults has increased 5000% since the “happy days” of the ’50s. If suicide, especially among the coming generation, is not an index of crisis, nothing is.
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