Dave Hickey comments on how today’s society (even more than that of his adolescence) has isolated itself. "We cling to the last vestige of industrial thinking: the presumption of mass-produced personalities and ready made experiences--a presumption that makes expression, appreciation, or even makes the perception of our everyday distinctions next to imposable" we have had every think in our life handed to us, from the day of our birth. We (the western culture) have the most external and physical stigmatization for the least amount of work (getting out of ones comfort zone) than ever before in human existence. Not to say that this indulgence is good by any means...it is the downfall of us, but its is how the collective of society sees happiness. He claims--rightfully so--that Norman Rockwell saw, even in the sixties, that our sheltered, monotones lives are not normal, and we are hurting ourselves when we never disband from the mechanized "safe" world, we cease to grow. Rockwell also saw that this trifling hue of safety cast upon society was full of paradoxes and social loop-holes, places where people like Hickey's family failed to meat the norm, and gathered for pure untainted passion, smoking "reefer" and getting down to some jams. I two believe that the most refined and knowledgeable artists ever have been able to look at the whole of society (in the way Rockwell does) and truly see it for what it is.