Any books about the cult of growth, progress, and advancement?

Any books about the cult of growth, progress, and advancement? I don’t understand why there needs to be this constant struggle. Economies need to grow, people need to strive, there’s always some phantom goal that needs to be achieved. Why can’t people just chill out and smell the roses? Nothing needs to be achieved.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    We live in a world with resource-scarcity. This means that we need to labour and struggle and compete with others all our lives just to survive. Then once you have survival, you also want a nice home with heating, plumbing, gas, water, and electricity. Even this takes a huge amount of labour to sustain: cleaning, cooking, repairing furniture, doing home renovations. And in order to be able to afford these things you have to spend the majority of your time labouring. Ultimately what everybody wants is to be rich, so they can delegate their labour to others. They can have maids cleaning their home, chefs cooking their food, and the workers at the company they own making money for them. Then they can live in a Garden of Eden like state, where they barely feel the effects of resource scarcity, and they can do what they want with their time and lives.
    This is what everybody is striving for. To get as close to this as possible. And hence the fierce competition.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Nothing needs to be achieved.
      Not necessarily true. Humans have a natural drive towards accomplishment. The problem is that economic accomplishment has stepped in and superceded everything. Economics is like a cuckoo — it drops its egg in your lap and tricks you into raising its offspring. You sacrifice your life to it out of duty, because it doesn't just leverage your work but your reasons for doing it. It steals your natural drive, makes you believe that its goals are your goals. To drop the metaphor, the problem is that economics do an exceptionally poor job of satiating that innate human need to accomplish things, even for the rare few who succeed at it. It's an empty, hollow accomplishment that, in the end, dumps you on your ass, staring down the barrel of fifty, wondering where your life went, what it was all for, if you can assuage this existential malaise by purchasing a sports car, a leather jacket and motorcycle, getting involved in partisan politics, etc. It's a grim and hopeless reality for most. Just don't fall for it! Give society its due, sure, but not an inch more.

      Bullshit. You were allowed to live on this earth so you can be productive for the elites and help them get more shit.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The elites don't give that much of a shit about you and your moronic parents who conceived you in some needle-ridden bathroom stall behind a gas station.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Nothing needs to be achieved.
    Not necessarily true. Humans have a natural drive towards accomplishment. The problem is that economic accomplishment has stepped in and superceded everything. Economics is like a cuckoo — it drops its egg in your lap and tricks you into raising its offspring. You sacrifice your life to it out of duty, because it doesn't just leverage your work but your reasons for doing it. It steals your natural drive, makes you believe that its goals are your goals. To drop the metaphor, the problem is that economics do an exceptionally poor job of satiating that innate human need to accomplish things, even for the rare few who succeed at it. It's an empty, hollow accomplishment that, in the end, dumps you on your ass, staring down the barrel of fifty, wondering where your life went, what it was all for, if you can assuage this existential malaise by purchasing a sports car, a leather jacket and motorcycle, getting involved in partisan politics, etc. It's a grim and hopeless reality for most. Just don't fall for it! Give society its due, sure, but not an inch more.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Economics is like a cuckoo
      What a ridiculous thought. Honestly, I'm surprised it's even possible to think this even makes sense. Wealth accumulation is not the same thing as "economics" and it's not the same thing as power accumulation either (which is what smart people actually care about and which distorts "economics" all the time).

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Wealth accumulation is not the same thing as "economics" and it's not the same thing as power accumulation either
        you are right in that they are not the same but the latter is inseparable from the former in modern day. elon musk is a good example. he has a lot of money but isn't smart or worthy of influence, so he's just a black sheep the US uses to their benefit. he's wealthy for the sake of wealth.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          NTA but imho at least some of his wealth accumulation is natural (e.g. being charming enough to cultivate a cult of personality, knowing which projects to attach himself to) but a significant part of it is natural (that is, he is propped up at least in part with the help of subsidies and state funding). He's likely a puppet of higher powers.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I agree, he's smart enough to know which sorts of things will keep him relevant like SpaceX - as are most people born into money. but I believe after he reached a certain level of wealth and influence, he became a puppet with no say. the whole
            twitter debacle seems to me like him coping with lack of autonomy

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I definitely agree with

            NTA but imho at least some of his wealth accumulation is natural (e.g. being charming enough to cultivate a cult of personality, knowing which projects to attach himself to) but a significant part of it is natural (that is, he is propped up at least in part with the help of subsidies and state funding). He's likely a puppet of higher powers.

            but I see where you are coming from. I definitely get puppet vibes despite his "anti-establishment" above-it-all persona. He was always pretty privilege but I wasn't going to hold that against him.

            >anything that makes no sense to me inherently, and in a cosmic sense, is incomprehensible
            >I'm so smart that i can understand everything immediately, therefore anything i don't immediately understand is nonsensical
            How to say you're not as bright as you think you are without realizing it in the process

            >anything that makes no sense to me inherently, and in a cosmic sense, is incomprehensible
            I never said that. You are exaggerating a sentiment you imagined me to be expressing in my post and generalizing that to how I interact with the world. This is after I and the person I originally replied to had already discussed the issue civilly. Are you sure you aren't the one who thinks he's too clever?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >What a ridiculous thought. Honestly, I'm surprised it's even possible to think this even makes sense
            Direct quote. I'm not generalizing. I'm pointing out why you rejected out of hand something that didn't immediately make sense to you. Whether or not you do that more generally is something I'll leave to you to examine. You took it upon yourself to respond dismissively when you misunderstood an analogy. I'm just pointing that out.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >anything that makes no sense to me inherently, and in a cosmic sense, is incomprehensible
        >I'm so smart that i can understand everything immediately, therefore anything i don't immediately understand is nonsensical
        How to say you're not as bright as you think you are without realizing it in the process

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Man's natural outlet for his intelligence is creation, which is the proof of his existence. Every man wants to make his mark and set himself apart from the rest, which is his legacy. Successive generations of men need to set themselves apart from their fathers and forefathers work which has become more and more complex. Luckily, innovation is easier when much of the work has been done for you already, which is true for the generations which have inherited an excess of wealth in the area of their distinction. Too make things easier for our sons and daughters, to glorify ourselves, to create --- that's why we do it.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If you're not growing, you're stagnating.
    If you're not looking forward to the future, you're stuck in the past.
    No pain, no gain.
    Captcha: PAWGG

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    People find meaning in the struggle.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Unironically read Marx

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    intrigue is man's highest good. no matter the level of wealth, without intrigue it is worthless -- everyone just wants a game to play. the absence of sincere occupation is no game at all.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Zapffe's The Last Messiah.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The economy is literally designed to work that way or else it breaks down. That’s why corporate companies encourage immigration.

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