or a quick chat on human nature.
over the years, if you're lucky enough, you see and experience a lot of different places, cultures social classes and what not. I'm getting pretty old and have known and seen with my own eyes enough things that I though were ridiculous movie-only stuff by now that I regularly come to these conclusions:
- when you are truly rich this is because you love power and owning stuff and kept at wanting more
- when you have so much money at some point owning things don't mean anything anymore and doesn't do anything for you anymore, so you want to own things that produce value instead
- when you own a bunch of that it doesn't mean anything anymore and doesn't mean anything to you anymore, so you realize you could have all the things in the world and it still means nothing
- you realize the only real value is other people, not things
- you now want to own people, and you want them to approve and follow your desires
- you enslave the world
there are other paths in life but it's a common one. most thankfully fail along the way, but not all. very few make money to achieve another goal, and when they its usually because their goal is either making new stuff, or explore new places. if its none of them they start drinking and drugs until they kill themselves.
and this is why we've the conspiracies we have today.
You are actually right when you say "unavoidable drive". What I call as "void" is at the very top end of the spectrum of that drive. I also agree that as a species, what sets us apart from every other animal is this drive. I also agree that if you don't have this drive, you will end up losing the will to live and can easily suicide or throw away your life in other ways.
The drive itself is not destructive, and as you correctly pointed, it very necessary for us to survive, but if it reaches the pathological level which I call "void", then it can cause a lot of problems, for the person and for others around them.
So the problem lies on both end of the spectrum - complete lack of drive or too much drive that it becomes the void.
I focus on the void because I believe a lot of do-gooders in the world suffer from their unavoidabe drive reaching the pathological levels of void. A lot of people with healthy amount of drive are the ones who are successful, moderately wealthy, but would never break through the corporate glass ceiling.
I disagree with this, simply because there is no "fixing humanity". If you believe there is a certain vision of humanity that you can create by whatever means, thats just your view. Not doing it doesn't make you weak, but makes you human for realising that your vision of fixing humanity is not worth all the pain and suffering.
Anyone who imposes a certain vision of ideals on humanity is doing it for their own sake and not for the sake of the humanity. It comes from a selfish place even though they truly believe it comes from a selfless place.
If you want to reach the highest level of consciousness, you will simply learn to observe and understand the nature of humanity and all its complexity, and accept that it is what it is, and you will celebrate it for all its goods and bads.
No offense taken. I love to discuss things, and I am glad you brought this up because it very much aligns with what I have been observing in my own experience.
I've a very machine like though process which I generally try to translate. I get that "void" speaks more to people in general but I find it incorrect enough in my own mental models basically. to me, a lack of drive is not void though I can conceive it to be explained as such.
with that said, I wanted to elaborate bit on "fix humanity". its a simplification to say that, f.e. we definitely are reproducing at a faster rate than sustainable, we also artificially create unfair outcomes which are not in line with nature's way.
e.g. you may be very smart, strong and charismatic but not own the land, money, etc and never be able to reach your full potential - while someone else who's much dumber, weaker, etc, but born right will. these things tend to balance themselves out overtime. nature's way is a simple decision system which we do not fully understand but can absolutely observe, and according to it, we'll certainly self destruct to some degree at some point. it could be in thousands of years though.
note that the part I find most interesting is the way the decision process itself works of course. if we figure it out, we may also lose drive. or we may create AI. or both!