Entertainment Mania
In our calloused, "shock-proof" societies, entertainment has taken on new and sinister meanings.
An almost unbelievable avalanche of sex, perversion, pornography, "blue" films, sadism, masochism, bestiality, murder, rape, and brutality has flooded into the public view through the modern "boob tube" of television, or the movies and lurid novels.
Where audiences formerly went to the "legitimate" theatre to be shocked by the indiscriminate use of choice four letter Anglo-Saxon words, they may now calmly listen to such filth in public movie houses.
In British television, almost unbelievable references to lewdness, perverted sex, and depravity is as open and unabashed as a news report.
Pornography alone, in the United States, is BIG BUSINESS! Enough pornographic books are sold each year to more than fill the Empire State building five times over — and MOST of these books find their way into the hands of children.
How many hours of your life have been spent watching ready-made daydreams in the movies, or on television? Probably, an incalculable number. And the effect these hours have had on your personality, your attitude toward life, and your very character is also incalculable!
People today seem gripped by a form of INSANITY when it comes to their favorite form of escape.
When astronauts Armstrong and Scott were tumbling wildly in their space capsule, which had become uncontrollable after their "docking" with the unmanned Atlas-Agena space vehicle, the major networks interrupted television programs across the United States to give the latest conditions.
Station switchboards were immediately swamped with angry callers.
"Why did you interrupt my favorite program?" they demanded! "What am I supposed to tell my kids?" they shouted. Later, it was revealed thousands of the callers were angry because their favorite program "Lost in Space" dealing with space-age science fiction had been preempted.
Thousands of others were scathingly indignant when their favorite program, "BATMAN" had been interrupted! Can you believe it? Here, over their heads, was a REAL life drama of LIFE AND DEATH being enacted: the greatest space achievement yet in the making, and a sudden emergency occurring which caused the aborting of the mission, and which could have caused the first disaster in space for the United States!
I was really concerned.
And, while I have no personal involvement with the space program; and feel no chauvinistic motives in man's race to the moon — I am, nevertheless, very much in admiration of the great courage of these men, and sincerely hope none of them ever meets disaster in this headlong race into outer space.
And yet many Americans were so "plugged in" to their modern society — so completely ENRAPTURED and ENSLAVED by their favorite method of ESCAPE FROM REALITY that they became enraged when ANYTHING disturbed it!
Incredible as it seems, it's all sickeningly true!
Self-indulgence today has reached new lows!
Multiple BILLIONS of dollars are spent by the lust-driven public each year to satisfy the senses! And multiple billions more are spent in an attempt to CURE the aches and pains resulting from such artificial and temporary "satisfaction." American adults alone swallow 16 billion aspirin tablets each year — enough to fill four 100-car freight trains.
"Relief" shouts one ad, is just "a swallow away!" So the public is encouraged to overeat, smoke furiously, watch the "boob tube" until your eyes feel like they're coming out of your head, swill booze until you feel like you have two heads, and a nice, easy, form of escaping from the results of your escape lies conveniently at hand.
Which brings us to yet another form of escape — and perhaps most immediately destructive of all — escape through artificially induced moods, fantasies, and a sense of well-being. Alcohol and drugs.
Alcoholism and Drug Addiction
Alcoholism is reaching disastrous proportions in America, Britain, Australia and Canada. It's a serious problem in Sweden, Denmark, and even Russia.
But the extreme form of escape through liquor, becoming an alcoholic, is only a small part of the picture. It's the multiple millions of steady, serious drinkers who simply cannot face the afternoon's work without that second and third cocktail at lunch that is the big problem.
Drinking is part and parcel with the glamour and glitter of modern society. The cocktail party, the neighborhood piano bar, the cocktail hours in leading restaurants have become as familiar a part of life as the favorite television show.
If the statistics could ever be compiled to show how many accidents on the job, how many automobile accidents, how many acts of violence, how many divorces, how many cases of fornication and adultery, how many disastrous business decisions had occurred through overindulgence in alcohol, it would be staggering!
But today, people drink to forget! Or they drink to stifle sheer boredom.
Or they drink for the hazy, rosy, sense of "well-being" they receive to replace the harried, enervated, worried, fearful attitude of mind plaguing them most of their waking hours.
Thousands of jokes revolve around drinking — and around drinking to make the local scene appear more pleasant, more palatable. It's a wonder some whiskey company hasn't yet labeled their bottle, "ESCAPE."
But like the barroom you see in the picture, millions no "hit the bottle" to escape. And this does not imply only a small segment of society, a tiny fringe group of irresponsible husbands who hate to go home to their wives — but an increasingly large and growing percentage of the population!
Government leaders in many nations are concerned about alcoholism among youths.
The futility imposed upon them by world conditions drives millions of youngsters to seek the adult thrills and pleasure NOW. Millions of them drink regularly today, form lewd sex clubs, or protest violently against adult society by descending into the limbo of modern "beat" music and clothes.
From the "filthy speech" movement at Berkeley to the gang fights between the "Mods" and "Rockers" in Britain, our youth of today revolts against the unacceptable and frightening present. This, too, is only their own inane way of escape — a youthful yearning for yesterdays gone too soon, and tomorrows they suspect may never come.
But drinking is often only the beginning.
Soon the "kicks" and "thrills" of liquor are too mild. Soon the drinker hears whispers of something a little more "hep"; a goof-ball or thrill pill that can send him clear to "cloud 9" and back, in only moments.
The stories of permanent brain damage, of weird, reckless acts perpetrated by youngsters on "glue" did little to discourage the wild fad of "glue-sniffing" that swept youthful society. Hospitals are still attending hopelessly injured teenagers whose minds are simply gone because they so frantically sought escape from the untenable pressures of life. And escape they did. Some are dead. Others are lying in mental wards, staring blankly at the ceiling, seeing nothing; their minds destroyed.
Marijuana, codeine, cocaine, opium, heroin, and now LSD.
The use of "hallucinatory" or "illusion-producing" drugs has skyrocketed in recent months.
Why?
Because word goes around about heightened perceptions, about feeling like "you're on top of the world"; and about the delightful unrepressed urges you feel; and about the wild, wild times others claim they had.
And besides, each new drug user is convinced HE won't get "hooked." HE will succeed in taking only just a LITTLE; in taking just barely enough to get his "kicks," but not enough to "do any harm."
This fools' reasoning has made a "mainliner" out of many a high school student — transformed many a juvenile looking for thrills into a hardened prostitute or dope-pusher because they just had to have the stuff, and had to find some way to provide the money it costs!