People do get carried along with the broad sweep of social and cultural forces. While they might seem abstract or intangible, the implications of an entertainment culture, consumerism, social media, and a host of other things are felt directly at the scale of individual lives. 

There is a collusion between participants, who permit themselves to be deluded about a great many things. I am not immune to this by any stretch of the imagination, but I am trying to be more aware. Overcoming a baseline of anxiety, I am turning my television off more often than I previously did. The quiet is disquieting, but not a bad thing. With less noise, or more importantly the absence of narratvie visual stimulation and the presence of the written word, I find I am free to ponder various things that would otherwise get drowned out.