“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human
body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every
human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic
passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our
factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.”
—Thomas Merton
September 6, 2026 54 1
