Welcome to Citizen. We have a very special show today.

Remember that you will die. Sounds ominous.

But the translation is one that you may have heard before, maybe in a Lamb of God song,

I'm a particular fan of that song myself.

Memento Mori. Remember that you will die.

There's a particular kind of life that looks from the outside like everything is fine. The bills are

paid. The house is warm. The children are fed. the job's stable, and the marriage is not collapsed.

Nobody's sick, no one's at war, no one's knocking at the door with catastrophic news.

And yet, something is wrong.

Not the way that demands immediate attention, not the way that produces some kind of crisis

or anything like that, but wrong in a quieter, more dangerous way.

The way that allows a man to go years without noticing that he is drifting, that he's giving

the best hours of his days to things that just don't matter.

That he's postponing everything serious while maintaining everything comfortable.

That he's alive without really living, present, without actually being present,

going through the motions of life while it slipped past him.

He is comfortable, and that's the word.

In a certain era, or a certain kind of civilization comfort has become the great sedative.

It doesn't kill men quickly, but it does soften them.

It removes the sense of urgency.

It quiets the voice and asks the hard question.

It surrounds a man with enough entertainment and convenience and mild satisfaction.

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