"We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many desires and synthetic passions as possible.... We live in a society that tries to keep us dazzled with euphoria in a bright cloud of lively and joy-loving slogans. Yet nothing is more empty and more dead, nothing is more insultingly insincere and destructive than the vapid grins on the billboards and the moronic beatitudes in the magazines which assure us that we are all in bliss right now. I know, of course, that we are fools, but I do not think any of us are fools enough to believe that we are now in heaven.... I think the constant realization that we are exhausting our vital spiritual energy in a waste, the inescapable disgust at the idolatrous vulgarity of our commercial milieu is one of the main sources of our universal desperation."
Good luck....
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***Update***
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The answer is Thomas Merton (well done, Rob).
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