"The world and society in 1913 looked like this: life is completely confined and shackled. A kind of economic fatalism prevails, each individual, whether he resists it or not, is assigned specific role and with it his interests and his character. The Church is regarded as a "redemption factory" of little importance, literature as a safety valve. . . . The most burning question day and night is: is there anywhere a force that is strong enough to put an end to this state of affairs? And if not, how can one escape it?" [1]

It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: Society in 2014 seems a whole lot like society a hundred years past.  "How can one escape it, in thought and in deed?" is a question asked by everyone and no one.

We've seen a force that's strong enough to put an end to the global status quo. We saw it twice too many times last century. I figure the reason we've invented so many distractions is because we subconsciously choose escape over giving ourselves over to said force. I've always wondered, "How could people have so easily relinquished control to a force that singlehandedly brought about two world wars?"

Erich Fromm investigated this phenomenon in many of his books, including "Escape From Freedom", wherein he poses the same question. He attempts to answer it from a social scientific angle, his conclusion being that giving oneself to certain forces is actually a form of escapism, that is, for example, tribalism, nationalism, and religion are are ways to escape the freedom that comes with living in a society where one is so free they start seeking out ways to bond[2] with others ("bondage") that inevitably reduces their freedom.

So really, following Fromm's line of reasoning, the 2 questions in the Dada diary excerpts is actually 1 question:

How can one escape the trap of escapism?

My questions: "Is it possible to escape?" If not, "How can we devise 'better' ways to escape than the ones we've relied on for centuries? Obviously escaping into an angry mass of solidarity against a common enemy has become an impractical mode of coping. So has escaping into all the wonderful sensory hi-jacking technomagical things we've invented to ignore problems on a global scale. Note that the latter method [of escape] is newer than the old: we invented them after the great wars to give ourselves what was, at one time, better ways to cope. And they worked! At least up until last decade.

Evidence that they've failed [as peace-keeping mechanisms of escape] can be seen in protests and in the growing number of "wake up sheeple" people. So now what?

So we're turning back to the oldest mode of escape. Not all of us, though. Some have taken to using technology (i.e. the internet) in attempt to devise newer, better ways to cope. With the Internet being so "new" it can be argued that it enables us to build our own personal escape -something we couldn't do last century.

What that means, I don't know.

It's still too early to tell whether the Internet is an altogether new mode of escape or just an old one in a new package that will fail us all the same, leaving us with no choice but to return to the old ways of escape, giving in to the force behind civil unrest and war. I hope that never happens, however unrealistic such a hope might be. All it might take is a total, permanent Internet black out and we're back to 1913 all over again.
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1. Excerpt from "Flight out of time: A Dada diary"
2. "Freedom has a twofold meaning for modern man: that he has been freed from traditional authorities and has become an 'individual,' but that at the same time he has become isolated, powerless and an instrument of purposes outside of himself, alienated from himself and others; furthermore, that this state undermines his self, weakens and frightens him, and makes him ready for submission to new kinds of bondage." - Excerpt from "Escape From Freedom"