Excerpt from my forthcoming book:

Pascal had much to say about diversions in his classic book, Pensées.  Pascal wrote how diversions can be greatly multiplied if you are wealthy.  More money equals more things to get distracted by.  This is still true today, but there are plenty of things all of us Americans, irrespective of income, can get diverted by.  For example, most of us have computers which can transport us to all kinds of worlds which then can keep us from thinking about the most important matters of life.  We may not feel very rich, but from a global or historical vantage point we are fabulously well off.  Most of us take things like air conditioning, quality water, and consistent electricity for granted.  As Bill Ball told a Sunday school class I was teaching, “Kings of the past would have been thrilled by owning a used Vega car and having unlimited access to petrochemicals.”