The desire to do something well, whether it is sailing a boat - or building a boat - reflects a need that was previously met in the workplace. Competence was shown on the job - holidays were for messing around. Nowadays the situation is reversed. Technology has removed craft from most occupations. [...] For many, weekend free time has become not a chance to create work but a chance to create work that is more meaningful - to work at recreation - in order to realize the personal satisfactions that the workplace no longer offers.
-- Witold Rybczynski in Waiting for the Weekend
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's nothing to kill anymore, there's nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this everyman is created.
-- David Fincher, director of Fight Club
People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.
-- Eric Hoffer in The True Believer