The steady haemorrhaging of public meaning

"Meanwhile, the more religion loomed up as an alternative to the steady haemorrhaging of public meaning, the more it was driven into various ugly forms of fundamentalism. Or if not that, then into New Ageist claptrap. Spirituality, in short, became either rock-hard or soggy. The meaning-of-life question was now in the hands of the gurus and spiritual masseurs, the technologists of piped contentment, and chiropractors of the psyche. With the correct techniques, you could now be guaranteed to shed the flab of meaninglessness in as little as a month. Celebrities whose minds had been addled by adulation turned to Kabbala and Scientology. They were inspired in this by the banal misconception that spirituality must surely be something outlandish and esoteric, rather than practical and material. After all, it was the material, in the shape of private jets and hordes of minders, that they were trying (mentally, at least) to escape from."