“The naive optimism of the 18th century led some people to believe that technological progress would lead to a kind of utopia in which human beings, freed from the need to work in order to support themselves, would devote themselves to philosophy, to science and to music, literature, and the other fine arts…Instead of using their technological means of production to provide themselves with free time in which to undertake intellectual and artistic work, people today devote themselves to the struggle for status, prestige, and power and to the accumulation of material goods that serve only as toys. In effect, American popular culture has been reduced to mere hedonism, and hedonism of a particular contemptible kind.”
Ted Kaczynski (aka The Unabomer)
I don’t condone the things Kaczynski did, but his word is both true and pungent.