In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating.

In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating.

For the first time in living memory, the whole class of graduates faces a future of crushing debt, and a high probability, almost the certainty, of ad hoc, temporary, insecure and part-time work and unpaid 'trainee' pseudo-jobs deceitfully rebranded as 'practices' - all considerably below the skills they have acquired and eons below the level of their expectations.

The tragedy is what - given the 'right circumstances,' - normal decent folks, like you and me, will do. This is what makes me worry whenever looking on the road that Israel entered and shows no intention of leaving.

Ideally, nothing should be embraced by a consumer firmly, nothing should command a commitment till death do us part, no needs should be seen as fully satisfied, no desires considered ultimate. There ought to be a proviso 'until further notice' attached to any oath of loyalty and any commitment. It is but the volatility, the in-built temporality of all engagements that truly counts; it counts more than the commitment itself, which is anyway not allowed to outlast the time necessary for consuming the object of desire (or, rather, the time sufficient for the desirability of that object to wane).

Happiness needs one-upmanship.

Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done.