The comfort dilemma: our well-being as part of the problem

From Wikipedia:

Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution.


I believe it was Plato who wrote "Necessity, who is the mother of invention". This is so true. Our brains work best when they are challenged. It is when we face difficulties that we bring the best out of ourselves. Certainly this is how I work. On a more positive side, it means motivation is what makes us do better. What better motivation than a true need?

As a society too, I think this is true. The bigger the challenges on an organized and educated society, the greater the progress. There are many examples throughout history for this, recently examples from how Japan or Germany recovered after WWII, or the US after the crack of 1929.

In the western world, particularly in Europe, we live today in the days of better living standards for the widest part of the population ever in human history. This great - but expensive and unfinished - accomplishment is in itself a big part of Europe's problems in my opinion.

Of course I do not mean to say we should give it away. Quite the contrary. But I think that such good living standards have led to western society, at least in Europe, to become ... lazy. I think the wider population is looking to relax and enjoy rather than to work to progress further. I believe from our education, and certainly the media bombarding us today, the idea of "take time for your self, enjoy life" is becoming imprinted in our minds.

It is a dilemma. What is the point to work hard if you don't enjoy the produce of your work? ... and if you do not work hard, how do you produce enough to enjoy life at all? There needs to be a balance.

Quite clearly, in today's world, the majority of the population in India, China and many other countries are willing to make bigger sacrifices that the average european would in terms of work/life balance. The challenge is that for Europe to maintain its competitiveness in such environment then, innovation becomes key. We need to do more with less, we need to be able to do what others can't do. It is the only way to generate value, when others are ready to do what you have been doing, but for less money. But innovation too, requires effort, dedication, passion.

There are of course the small number of individuals who have creativity naturally come to them. But we are not all a Steve Jobs quite evidently. In turn, we need as many people as possible working on new ideas and new ways of doing things, and I would say we need this at all levels in the society. This is a challenge in our days, where less and less people want to put a lot of dedication to their works "because the rest of their life is more important".

The solution is in education. Newer generations need to learn very well that our (their) current living conditions didn't come for free, and should not be taken for granted. They should be taught that sacrifice and hard work are a real value. Only this way we will have future generations which can find the right balance between sacrifice and leisure. Which will help preserve and grow our well being, while also help bring the same living conditions to the rest of the world.

I find shocking to learn about a trend in our education systems to simplify things. To impose an approach based on theories that children do not need to learn based on evaluations, that you can always learn playing, etc.  In my opinion, the easier we try to make it for our children, the less "adequate" they will be in the word of tomorrow. Natural Selection has been teaching this to us through millions of years of evolution.