There is something deep-rooted in the human psyche that requires a large dollop of reality-suspension.

I’ve written before to say that I believe the main reason for this is that – having by accident been handed out a brain that knows for certain one day we’ll die – we need every which way kind of mechanism to deny that certainty.

Every culture in history has had a recreational drug of choice in order to aid in this process. For thousands of years, the only opiate was religion. But then discovery and chemistry took over. And so, largely devoid as we are of religious belief in an afterlife in the West, it therefore follows that we need more mind-alteration than any culture in history.

In much of the northern and Western EU, the death-fear-anaesthetic of choice is alcohol. I’ve been abusing it on and off for over forty years now, but my immunity seems to be building…the rising tide of reality being such as it is. Many others throughout Europe and the US have variously preferred Valium, Xanax, wacky baccy and the post-Prozac generation of anxiolitics. While those who need to wipe everything out in the fast lane to a nonexistent afterlife smoke crack, snort coke and chase dragons.

But the single most consistent aspect of contemporary Western life (upon which I have, perhaps foolishly, chosen to comment over the last nine years) is the close to 100% success rate of our Establishments in persuading most folks –  without the aid of drugs – that they are being f**ked for their own good. The Abe Lincoln thing about not being able to fool all the people all of the time still holds good….but by God, it is hanging by a thread.

Obviously, the multiplicity of circuses and surplus of bread have made this far easier to do than it was before the internet-plus-shlock-television age. The West has grown fat of both waistline and brain since 1960 – probably the first (and last) time the media helped elect someone of any value or leadership. In the 54 years since then, all of the following have played their part in ensuring the inexorable rise of uncontrolled ego – in turn leading inevitably to the hegemony of mediocrity:

* Narrow, target-driven education

* The explosion in media channels

* The perversion of media information by media manipulators

* An obsessive fixation with the past allied to a terror of the future

* The revaluation of the personal alongside the devaluation of the communal

* The replacement of the physical with the virtual

* A preference for counterfeit image over genuine content

* The decline of empirical data and the rise of neo-deistic belief

* Appeasing failure at the expense of judging performance

The net result is that legitimate social enquiry been superceded by illegitimate political assertion; the thirst for knowledge has been overtaken by the worship of money; and the quest for contentment has been rejected in favour of the lust for fame.

Because of this, millions of minds have been put at rest. Or perhaps more accurately, laid to rest. Whether they will Rest in Peace is another matter entirely.