I betrayed my dreams. And for the very same reason, many products that we purchase are never completely utilized for what they can be to us. For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking.
Experience is a handicap.
In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath with incessant hustling. The despair brought by unemployment comes not only from the threat of destitution, but from the sudden view of a vast nothingness ahead. The unemployed are more likely to follow the peddlers of hope than the handers-out of relief. Brenda Hutchins states that the morbidly obese often jump from one fat-loss program to another in desperate search of the unreasonable hope of a miracle cure. They seem to avoid a direct approach to their problem.