Our old religions created strong societies by cultivating humans who could delay gratification, building a tolerance for suffering that would see them through the hard winter, the invading army, the totalitarian usurper. The modern religion of consumerist instant gratification, on the other hand, serves only the masters for whom the zombified subjects make perfect cattle, relinquishing their freedom and individuality in exchange for the next paltry release of soothing opiates. The effects wear off sooner with each dose, each time leaving the subject hungry and ashamed, a sort of post-ejaculate clarity that in the moment reveals the true state of its abject slavery, making the victim all the more eager to submit fully to the only source of pleasure and comfort it has ever known.

— Phil Greene in Jason Pargin, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, 2024, St. Martin’s Press, Ch. Day 1, p. 122