Mad Men

Yeah, I watch Mad Men too. The cigarette smoking going on is not dramatic hyperbole. My dad smoked 3-4 packs a day back then. The Mad Men have mini-bars in office and drink freely all times of day. This was considered the golden age of sex – after the curative effects of penicillin had been discovered, and with a wide-ranging comfort and confidence in present and future outlooks. It was before religious revival in the 70s and there seemed to be a lack of concern about consequence.

The show also brings to mind “The Lonely Crowd,” I read in high school in the mid-sixties. The various characters in the show are tradition-directed, inner-directed or other-directed but regardless of type all of them seem to be breaking apart before our eyes, to me the picture of an unhealthy society. Change was inevitable and that is the real curative to potentially deadly defects. “My station will change after while.”