Sentence:  The curse of <WSD>polypragmatism</WSD> that brought modern mass misery has never been more keenly pointed out than by a great man who stood at the very cradle of the bourgeois era, Blaise Pascal. In his thoughts on "Human Misery" he writes: "The most intolerable punishment for the human soul is to live with itself and think of itself. For that reason the soul is constantly concerned with the effort to forget itself, by occupying itself with all manner of things that prevent introspection..." 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  A tendency toward meddling or officiousness.