As life is imposed on us, it is too difficult for us and brings us too much pain and disappointment, and too many impossible tasks. We absolutely need palliatives to endure it. (“We cannot do without provisional constructions of support,” the writer Theodor Fontane told us.)13 There are perhaps three such measures: powerful distractions that make us disregard and attach less importance to our misery; substitute satisfactions that reduce it; and intoxicants that make us insensitive to it. Something of this kind is absolutely required.
