Here Be Monsters

I am too young to know
what American life was like
between 1925 and 1929,
the year of the great depression,
which was indirectly caused
by Edward Bernays reinvention
of 'need' as 'want' through advertising,
so that manufacturers could sell more
to now-eager consumers who soon after
found their wealth and health devalued.

But with my experience of the internet
I recognise the reinvention of human restlessness
and hyping up of expectations of world change
that can't be met, and will prove to be chimera.

I sense that we have been here before,
and our fate now is like our fate then,
we cannot hope to escape that easily.