I made some posts on Facebook recently. One was a link to a story on Vatican Radio about a Catholic activist in Vietnam who was released from prison. He was put there for demonstrating for political and religious liberty in Vietnam.
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/10/03/vietnam_frees_catholic_activist_after_three_years_in_prison/1107847
These are things we take for granted in the USA.
The second was a comment I made:
“Where did we get the idea that having sex is a right? Or that having sex will make us happy? just wondering that’s all.”
Let’s get back to the title. The desire to detach ourselves from the travail of this world is shared by many. Businesses like Anheuser-Busch (or its successor) or the Mexican drug cartels are more than happy to facilitate this detachment. I don’t need to mention the advertising or entertainment industries, do I? Seems like no matter how hard we try to escape, reality always catches up. So our foray into numbness is always short-lived. And we never quite get numb, because we know the fix, or the endorphins, always wear off.
Were Karl Marx alive today, I think he might transpose some words in his famous statement, “Opium is the religion of the people.” We keep trying to consume our way into happiness. What we get is more damage , further intrusions of reality, from addiction to bankruptcy, STI’s, or the basic guilt and remorse we feel for treating people like instruments for our gratification.
The newly-freed Vietnamese political prisoner was jailed because he engaged and challenged his country. Religion was hardly his opium. It was anything but.