EXCESS;
AMERICA: EXCESS

Were I to select a word which I felt best described the modern American temper that word would be excess.

Almost everything we do, we overdo. We are forever creating monstrosities. If it moves, it moves too fast; if it is high, it is too high; if it makes noise, the noise is ridiculously loud; if we make a car, it is sure to be grotesquely large and gaudy with vastly more power than is required for the transportation we desire. We have too many telephones, too many filling stations, too many stores. Our national debt is astronomical, our waste incredible; our highways are too many, too complex and too expensive. Vacations are too long and too strenuous. Our swapping of Christinas gifts has become an irksome rat race not remotely related to the blessed Advent. Music we hear everywhere till our ears are suffocated in a welter of inappropriate melody.…

Without doubt we are out of control and it may be that we have reached the point of no return. We may never recover from our mighty binge. It should be said, however, that if we alone are destroying ourselves by excess, it is because we are the only nation rich enough to do it successfully and to get such a whale of a lot of pleasure out of the job.

Proverbs 23:4; Luke 12:19–21; 1 Timothy 6:9–10

The Warfare of the Spirit, 81, 82.