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Perfect contentment leads to stagnation
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Have a look at how so many of us live our lives. We get up in the morning, go out all day and work, work, work. Whether in a rich country or a poor one, a good neighbourhood or bad, you can be sure that most of the people around you will be working most of the time.
Yet many of us don't enjoy working. We whine about how boring or difficult our jobs are. We purchase labour-saving devices such as dishwashers and washing-machines. Many people wish they could win the lottery so they can save themselves from what they see as a life of drudgery.
Yet, at the same time, many people who appear to have everything are miserable. They wallow around in their big houses with their good looks and perfect health, eventually turning to drugs to fill what they see as an empty life.
Others who have more than anybody could possibly want - billionaires and the like - seem dissatisfied also. They work harder than ever to expand their empires and their influence.
Looking at all this, you have to wonder sometimes - just what the heck is it that we humans want from the world? Obviously material comfort alone isn't enough to satisfy us.
The answer seems to me that we want challenges. Not artificial ones, but real challenges - in love, in business, in health. But we want them in such a way that we feel we are capable of overcoming them.
Thus, the challenges that a poor, rural child in The Philippines faces - hunger, disease, exploitation - aren't the type we particularly want. But the challenges the rich have are desirable to us.
Becoming the most popular girl at school is a challenge that occupies many an American teenager. How to turn $10 billion into $20 billion is a challenge that fills the lives of some famous businessmen. Curiously, the rewards for completing these probably wouldn't be as satisfying, on a purely lifestyle level, as those of the poor child in the Philippines moving into a comfortable middle-class existence. But they provide meaning to living nevertheless. And they are cruel and ruthless - real challenges.
We all wish our problems would go away, but if they did so completely we'd probably find something missing from our lives. Perfect contentment leads to stagnation, and that is a psychological burden as large as many of the problems the world provides us with.
We are all, in many way, problem-solving machines. It's what we like to do. That's why we create seemingly pointless pursuits for ourselves - crossword puzzles, marathons, video games. We need something to challenge us in order to make us feel alive.
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