No they aren’t. They are pointing out that it’s a childlike fantasy that ends in pain and agony because a society based on subsistence is missing basic things like anti-bacterials, insulin, anesthesia for surgery, etc.
The remedy to pain and agony is opium not modern medicine. Stretching out the lives of workers is an economic imperative not a humanistic one. Our fear of suffering and death makes us easy to manipulate.
My grandfather got a heart surgery and a pace maker and lived 20 more years gardening, going to the cabin, helping raise his grandkids, and playing cards daily with his wife. Those 20 years were arguably many of the best of his life considering he grew up in the Great Depression and then went to world war 2.
Getting ripped on opium is no different than getting ripped on morphine. Modern medice has that too. The difference is that modern medicine has far more tools in the bag before something becomes a terminal illness.
