Have you ever wanted something so badly it stung? To crave for something so strongly that your insides hurt and your heart feels bruised? Wanting is a powerful emotion. If you look at the seven deadly sins - lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride - you'll find that wanting is behind all of them. Lust is the excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature. Gluttony, the insatiable wanting to overindulge in anything (more commonly food). Greed, of course, is a sin of excess as well, fueled by the want of more, more and more personal gain. Sloth, the sin of laziness, is the want to rest/slack or the want to just lie there and do nothing, in layman's terms. Wrath is the want to be able to leash uncontrolled feelings, of anger, hatred and violence. Envy is the want to be like somebody, or the desire to have something that belongs to someone which they perceive themselves as lacking. Pride, in Chinese terms, the wanting of 'face', of being able to hold your head high, of being the best (egotism) - a want to be more important or more attractive than others. As Economics teaches us, human wants are insatiable and limitless. The more people get, the more people want. This is progress for us. We make two dolls and are not satisfied. We make machines to make more dolls. We make machine-producing machines. We use 'lower-caste' people to operate these machines.
How can people think of progress as a good thing? Does it all matter, at the end of the day, when the sun dies and humans kill themselves and their world as a result? Just to satisfy a desire that continues to grow and never be satiated? Does it matter that we use take advantage of certain people as a means to our end (pun & irony intended)? On the other hand, if we are going to kill ourselves by torturing the earth, then why do we need to care about progress and all those high-sounding ideals? What is the use?
[to be continued]
