During the trip (love the dual meaning of that word in this context) I spent a lot of time wondering how I would act, think, and see the world differently had I grown up in different eras.

I don't romanticize the past - I think the 60's were as superficial as they were profound, and the labor movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were people with nothing to lose but who had decided they could do better than be stomped on.

I definitely have things to lose and I haven't the slightest idea how to be an activist. I've never been part of a community the way I understand the word. I do not want to sacrifice aspects of myself through difficult activism in exchange for a potential future good - I've lived in terror and I've lived in bliss, and I will choose the latter every time. The "lottery mentality" you have described is part of my experience.

I think there are two problems in the post industrial era: "they" don't need our labor anymore, and the citizens of democratic states haven't developed sufficient countermeasures to systematized propaganda. Shit, how am I going to fight against that? I can't even explain the financial crisis in plain language to myself, much less to someone who has ingested an emotive narrative that confirms their fears in easily understood terms. My first and only idea is the massage therapy thing - mutually beneficial in a very good way and maybe more than the sum of its parts, but not by much.

My guess is that as I get older I'll feel a stronger ethical obligation.

My goal for humanity - maximizing happiness - has always been a difficult prospect. The challenge is the same question you proposed in another frame - "where is the energy going to come from?"

you are the media you consume.