In Sickness Not in Health- More Of

This piece continued. If you're gonna read this, read that first.

"And so we can expect him to be launched on a life of ferocious depravity?"
"Well, perhaps not in the sense you imagine. Have a look at this." And we are looking at a well-to-do man in a well-to-do house gazing serenely from his most elegant and most comfortable armchair at a large wide-screen television set, on which is showing some American programme from some very widely loved television series. It is of course the most mediocre of fare, but given the ordinary(apologies to 'ordinary') standard against which it is judged, well then, this is the most marvellous art. And thank God for the people who make such stuff! What would our poor lives be otherwise?

"But he looks happy and harmless enough. I thought you said he was debased."
"This man grew up reading, or at least sometimes, people like Nietzsche, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Joyce and the like- he's even written books on great sociological, philosophical themes. Of course, he caught that inner illness of telling himself life was sick, but to actually dwell in the ugliness of that landscape is far from pleasant. But it is the mind that led him there. He won't mind having the thought of general sickness in the background; it serves a purpose after all- eliminates the burden and horizon of obligations."
"Obligations to whom?"
"Himself and everyone else, of course. So, it is the mind that led him into that landscape, and there's no need for any attempt to change that land- that sick land is all there is, so what's to change- but, well, life should still be comfortable; what's the point of it all if one doesn't allow oneself these pleasant consolations, and, well, can one really expect to enjoy these comforts if one's mind is telling oneself life is sick and depraved? You've made your nest nice and cosy but your mind is spoiling things a little. So it needs to be cast away, though of course without the awareness of its being cast away; the intellect above everything, after all. And so, here's the answer: the television. That will soothe the savage beast. All those other millions upon millions basking in the communal glow of whatever show from America is busy substituting that almost forgotten world, that of Shakespeare, Mozart, Kafka, Tarkovsky... "But this is art too, I tell you....great art..." And so we leave our contented man, gazing serernely, smothering the nasty, but necessary, thought.