“It is a major defect of our present organized system and the economy of abundance that, without providing great goals, it has taken away some of the important real necessities, leaving people with nothing to do.
The void is soon filled. Behavior like going into debt on the installment plan, gives an artificial but then real necessity, something to do, paying up. This is the Rat Race, but I doubt that it would be run if people did not need its justifying necessity, for the commodities themselves are not that attractive.”

— Paul Goodman, book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 154.

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American novelist, playwright, poet and psychotherapist 1911–1972

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