Conflicts, religions, materialism and such provide a FOCUS.

Celebrities were invented for the same reason. Human beings are still merely refined animals with a handful more cognitive reasoning skills.

In a culture where you are condemned to death the moment you are born, the goal of a government becomes one of pacification and quelling dissension.

It is much easier to focus on Angelina Jolie giving her brother a strangely passionate kiss than thinking about why life exists at all and what the purpose of such life is, if any. It is much easier focusing one's anger at ridiculous political parties, religions and television shows than at one's own human nature which averts away from thoughts of death, life and consciousness as if not thinking about it will make life longer or happier, rather than simply keep one ignorant and pliable to those who have thought about it and created their own set of answers.

Hate, envy, fear and lots of mundane focuses keep lots of folks busy till they die. As they get older they are not quite so vain or concerned with their looks, see through the celebrity worship money machine and often have outgrown the shallow wants and desires of the average 18 year old. Those that cling to vanity, material desires and pacification are particularly pathetic figures.

The last thing to go is the desire to change things and people to the way one wishes they 'should' be. Naturally, this means complaining about all those whos beliefs and actions seem opposed to one's own interests and beliefs.

Worst of all, after a lifetime of being led around by others, religions and -isms one will find that all this external focus with its resentments, emotion and timewasting creates a pattern of more problems and wasted focus later.

But that's something folks find out much later.

;-)