Blaise Pascal agreed; he predicted that the best way to make people truly miserable would be to take away all their diversions, whether at work or through recreation: “Without [diversions] we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.”

Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung