To the extent that culture is a good thing, counterculture is a better thing. We are all born into a culture, a rationalized defensiveness. Shortly thereafter, we stop seeing the world as it is and start seeing it through a kaleidoscope of religion, tradition and politics. This distortion of reality causes us to flail around blindly while doing so with one hundred percent conviction.
There is a tendency in men to say what other men say, to believe what other men believe, and to go where other men direct them. We’ll call this expert-itis or sheep mind. Or religion. Or politics. Or armed service. Our unwillingness to stand alone, to be alone, to find ourselves within ourselves, betrays a great fear. And where fear is, love is not.
Will the last person to leave the church please turn out the lights.
Consumerism is more like a religion than religions are. Its temples, real and virtual, draw millions of adherents on every day and night of the week. All the festivals are celebrated. Nobody is turned away. And via the act of acquisition, we’re happy again.
If everyone seeks to be happy—through pleasure, acquisition, travel, sex, food, religion, drugs and a myriad of other means—then why is that result so seldom achieved? Why don’t we die laughing?
Men's Work 