Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle
of cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape into an
intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate
aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to
artifice, to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average
levels of stress, pressure, concentration and monotony -- this is the
ideal of popular entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming
alienation; the point is to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy.
That is what holidays are for.