From John Twelve Hawks’s “ How We Live Now” (2005):
Instead of resisting the Vast Machine, many of us have given into cynicism and distraction. Our contemporary culture has become a brilliantly colored surface without a deeper spiritual meaning. We care more about celebrities than our own neighbors. Are Nick and Jessica getting divorced? Is that famous actor secretly gay? Staged media events allow us to think that everything is false. Our sense of powerlessness — the belief that an ordinary person does not matter — has twisted our lips into a sneer.