Day offers two equally necessary sacraments - the benediction of morning and the absolution of dusk. In the morning coffee blesses and in the evening wine absolves.

The 1970s was the decade of liberation, of anger at injustice and demands for recognition and rights. But over time, the demand for specific rights degraded into a generalized sense of entitlement, the demand for specific recognition into a generalized demand for attention and the anger at specific injustice into a generalized feeling of grievance and resentment. The result is a culture of entitlement, attention-seeking and complaint.

Being constantly the hub of a network of potential interruptions provides the excitement and importance of crisis management. As well as the false sense of efficiency in multitasking, there is the false sense of urgency in multi-interrupt processing.

Snobbery management is as difficult and necessary as anger management.

However, the serious seeker of detachment will have to embrace the Holy Trinity of Ss - Solitude, Stillness and Silence - and reject the new religion of Commotionism, which believes that the meaning of life is constant company, movement and noise.

But who, in the Western world, has not been deranged by a toxic cocktail of dissatisfaction, restlessness, desire and resentment? Who has not yearned to be younger, richer, more talented, more respected, more celebrated, and, above all, more sexually attractive? Who has not felt entitled to more and aggrieved when more was not forthcoming? It is possible that a starving African farmer has less sense of injustice than a middle-aged Western male who has never been fellated.

Employees hate meetings because they reveal that self-promotion, sycophancy, dissimulation and constantly talking nonsense in a loud confident voice are more impressive than merely being good at the job - and it is depressing to lack these skills but even more depressing to discover one's self using them.