I transcribed this (I think that's the right word) from a CD that I'd downloaded. This guy went hitching across the states and took a tape recorder with him. He'd ask people about their personal philosophies and tape their responses. This is what this one sociologist had to say:

"I think one of the most difficult and unappreciated problems that people have now is the amount and variety of distractions available to them. I don't think that most people realize that a lot of what they're doing involves distracting themselves in one way or another from things that are bothering them. They can be distracted away from thinking about them or distracted away from feeling them, but I think that a lot of topics or ideas in this society hinge on this. For example, there's so much entertainment and I don't think that most times people are entertained as much as they are distracted, by television and movies. And then I think the idea of distraction includes almost all of the different kinds of drugs that we use, whether it be cigarettes, alcohol, sugar or anything stronger. I think often times we're trying to alter the state that we're in and often times that's an attempt to alter away from some unpleasant feeling or unpleasant thought that we're having. I think that as the country has become more and more prosperous, there are more and more kinds of distractions available to us and I really don't think that people appreciate that so much of their life is spent or involved in doing that. I think that if people were to understand that and reflect a little bit on the fact that there must be something going on from which they're trying to distract themselves, it would give people a different way of thinking about how to understand their living their lives and the way that they're living them."