RE: The Daily Meme #954!

Perhaps, but there is little escape. To quote an earlier passage;

''Oh, by the way, while you are ruining your own peace of mind and I am ruining the Bishop's, you'd better look up Mrs. Wickson and Mrs. Pertonwaithe. Their husbands, you know, are the two principal stock- holders in the Mills. Like all the rest of humanity, those two women are tied to the machine, but they are so tied that they sit on top of it."

Are we crazy?
Living our lives through a lens
Trapped in our white-picket fence
Like ornaments
So comfortable, we're livin' in a bubble, a bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, the trouble
Aren't you lonely up there in Utopia?
Where nothing will ever be enough
Happily numb
So comfortable, we're livin' in a bubble, a bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, the trouble (aha)
So put your rose-colored glasses on
And party on (woo)
Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we're free (aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm, to the rhythm
Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we're free (aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm, to the rhythm
Are we tone deaf?
Keep sweeping it under the mat
Thought we could do better than that
I hope we can
So comfortable, we're livin' in a bubble, a bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, the trouble (aha)
So put (so put)
Your rose-colored glasses on
And party on (woo)
Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we're free (aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm, to the rhythm
Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we're free (aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm, to the rhythm (woah-oh-oh)
It is my desire
Break down the walls to connect, inspire
Ayy, up in your high place, liars
Time is ticking for the empire
The truth they feed is feeble
As so many times before
The greed of all the people
They stumbling and fumbling
And we about to riot
They woke up, they woke up the lions (woo)
Turn it up, it's your favorite song (hey-oh-oh)
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie (like a wasted zombie)
Yeah, we think we're free (aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm, to the rhythm (we're all chained to the rhythm)
It goes on, and on, and on (turn it up)
(It goes) It goes on, and on, and on (turn it up)
(It goes on, and on, and on, and on)
It goes on, and on, and on (on, and on, and on)
'Cause we're all chained to the rhythm

I'm not strong enough to stay away
Can't run from you, I just run back to you
Like a moth, I'm drawn in to your flame
You say my name, but it's not the same
You look in my eyes
I'm stripped of my pride
And my soul surrenders
And you bring my heart to its knees

And it's killin' me when you're away
And I wanna leave and I wanna stay
And I'm so confused, so hard to choose
Between the pleasure and the pain
And I know it's wrong, and I know it's right
Even if I try to win the fight
My heart would overrule my mind
And I'm not strong enough to stay away

I'm not strong enough to stay away
What can I do? I would die without you
In your presence, my heart knows no shame
I'm not to blame, 'cause you bring my heart to its knees

And it's killin' me when you're away
And I wanna leave and I wanna stay
And I'm so confused, so hard to choose
Between the pleasure and the pain
And I know it's wrong, and I know it's right
Even if I try to win the fight
My heart would overrule my mind
And I'm not strong enough to stay away

There's nothing I can do
My heart is chained to you
And I can't get free
Look what this love's done to me

And it's killin' me when you're away
And I wanna leave and I wanna stay
I'm so confused, so hard to choose
Between the pleasure and the pain
And I know it's wrong, and I know it's right
Even if I try to win the fight
My heart would overrule my mind
And I'm not strong enough to stay away

Not strong enough, strong enough
Not strong enough, strong enough to stay away
Not strong enough, strong enough
Not strong enough, strong enough
And I'm not strong enough to stay away

"CHAPTER IV
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE

The more I thought of Jackson's arm, the more shaken I was. I was confronted by the concrete. For the first time I was seeing life. My university life, and study and culture, had not been real. I had learned nothing but theories of life and society that looked all very well on the printed page, but now I had seen life itself. Jackson's arm was a fact of life. "The fact, man, the irrefragable fact !" of Ernest's was ringing in consciousness.

It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole
society was based upon blood. And yet there was Jackson. I could not get away from him. Constantly my thought swung back to him as the compass to the Pole. He had been monstrously treated. His blood had not been paid for in order that a larger dividend might be paid. And I knew a score of happy complacent families that had received those dividends and by that much had profited by Jackson's blood. If one man could be so monstrously treated and society move on its way unheeding, might not many men be so monstrously treated? I remembered Ernest's women of Chicago who toiled for ninety cents a week, and the child slaves of the Southern cotton mills he had described.

And I could see their wan white hands, from which the blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which had been made my gown. And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and the dividends that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon my gown as well. Jackson I could not escape. Always my meditations led me back to him.

Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge of a precipice. It was as though I were about to see a new and awful revelation of life. And not I alone. My whole world was turning over.
There was my father. I could see the effect Ernest was beginning to have on him. And then there was the Bishop. When I had last seen him he had looked a sick man. He was at high nervous tension, and in his eyes there was unspeakable horror. From the little I learned I knew that Ernest had been keeping his promise of taking him through hell. But what scenes of hell the Bishop's eyes had seen, I knew not, for he seemed too stunned to speak about them."