God And Greek Food

Even though I’ve never been there, Greece evokes a laidback, leisurely lifestyle. A warmer climate generally gives me that image but Greece, especially because of the beautiful scenery and delicious, healthy food. Why hustle when there is no threat of freezing to death or food shortage?

It’s tempting to describe such an attitude as “lazy,” but there is also something irrational about our endless drive to succeed. What exactly are all these innovations and technological advancements serving?

When engineers figured out how to make fuel-efficient cars, our oil consumption didn’t decline. Instead, the average horsepower of cars went up while maintaining the same level of fuel consumption.

LED lightbulbs didn’t lower our electric consumption either. Instead, the earth is getting brighter at night.

Medical advancement didn’t make us healthier; it allowed us to live unhealthier lives because modern medicine can fix any consequences.

We can live longer today, but that just means we have more time to watch Netflix.

In short, if we buy larger pants, we grow into them. What professes to be a solution today is just another cause of problems. Nothing will be solved by commercial flight to space.

Microsoft Word was good enough 20 years ago, but they keep developing it. If a solution becomes good enough, we move on to a different problem, but we have come to a point where there is no problem worth solving because all the problems today were created by our solutions.

When one person is a fast eater at the table, the rest tend to get dragged into his pace, causing indigestion—likewise, these people who mindlessly pursue success drag the rest of us into their pointless games.

Many of us feel the pointlessness even if we are not conscious of it, which is why many businesses are keen on defining a “mission” that makes their employees feel good. It can’t just be about profit; it has to be a social mission because today’s corporate employees are feeling emptier than ever. I think going to church every Sunday was a better idea as it won’t cause environmental damage from over-production.

Which makes more sense: God and Greek food or success and pollution?