EXCERPT The opium of the people in the present world is perhaps not so much religion as it is accepted boredom. Such a world is at the mercy, it must be known, of those who provide at least the semblance of an escape from boredom. Human life aspires to the passions, and again encounters its exigencies. Georges Bataille Meanwhile, the Great Army needs a great deal of eloquence to make us forget that there will soon be seven billion victims of the curse which, nearly two centuries ago, scandalised Burke: ‘The more wealth is produced, the more poor there are!’ The cybernetic revolution, the famous ‘third wave’ that promised to liberate us, often seems to be synonymous with poverty for the most deprived and intellectual indigence for the most privileged…