ifling

I have not been on in a while. You would think that being unemployed should open you up to all kinds of free time, but it seems to have had the opposite effect on me.

That is not what I am here about. I was clearing out the junk from an old notebook when I came across these thoughts:

Progress is a declining curve where we equate making life better with making life easier.

Ease of living is at the root to a lack for concern for the future.

Ease of life is in inverse proportion to the time into the future to which a person will look.

Concern for the future is directly proportional to the drive for progress.

Progress is a declining curve where we equate making life better with making life easier. By this I mean that most of the progress mankind has made throughout its history has had one goal. Making life easier through creature comforts: a warm comfortable place to live, enough to eat, freedom from disease and extended life.

Ease of living is at the root to a lack for concern for the future. When life is difficult you work hard and look to the future for improvement. When life is easy you look for leisure pursuits with which you can enjoy the moment.

Ease of life is in inverse proportion to the time into the future to which a person will look. Simply imagine yourself in debt. Deep in debt you are low on the curve the describes how easy your life may be, and the farther into the future until you contemplate the freedom to spend on luxury. If you are free of debt, you are high on the ease of life curve and you need not look beyond your next paycheck for those luxuries.

Concern for the future is directly proportional to the drive for progress. Free of the concerns for satisfying creature comforts, most people will not look beyond the moment.

To sum up this equation: As progress makes life easier, the motivation that drives that progress declines, we cease to be concerned for the future. This was originally part of a philosophy that I was developing for a work of fiction that has since transformed beyond using this thought, but i find it relevant to much of the state of the world today. At least in the US. It is by no means a complete thought, neither do you have to look very hard for signs of exactly what I am saying.