Why the World Is Designed to Depress You
The Disease of More and Why Are We Miserable..
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Words: 1390 | Normal Reading: 7 minutes | Slow Reading: 14 minutes
The Disease of More..
The richest man in the world once sat across from a reporter who asked him a simple question: “How much money is enough?” His answer should terrify you. Not because it was greedy, but because it was honest. “Just a little bit more,” he said. Just a little bit more.
The wealthiest person on the planet, with more money than he could spend in ten lifetimes, still felt empty. Still needed more. And if you think that’s his problem, think again. Right now, in this very moment, you’re running the same race. Chasing the same ghost. Infected with the same disease that’s destroying not just your peace, but the entire planet.
Accumulating “more and more” isn’t just a desire; it’s a creature. A shadow that has followed humanity since the moment we learned to stand upright and immediately wondered how to stand higher. It whispers in our ears like a demon doing customer service: “Congrats on what you have… now ruin your peace and chase something bigger.”
You Don’t Want Things, You Want Wanting
Here’s what’s really happening in your head, and please pay attention because this is important. You think you want a new car, a bigger house, a better job, or a perfect relationship. But that’s not true.
What you actually want is the wanting itself.
The moment you get what you wanted, within an hour, you’re already thinking about the next thing. The car is nice, yes, but you need a better one now. The house is good, but the neighbor’s is bigger. The job pays well, but there’s a promotion you could chase.
Carl Jung said it perfectly: “Selfish desire ultimately desires itself.”
Means what?
Means you’re not hungry for things. You’re hungry for the hunger. You’ve become addicted to the chase. The chase becomes your identity. Without something to want, you don’t know who you are.
This is like being hungry for hunger. Completely ridiculous, but this is how most people live their whole lives.
The World Is Increasingly Designed to Depress Us
“The World is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more?
How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything.
How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind.
To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”
―Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive
Ambition or Addiction?
Now, everyone will say, “No, no, this is not addiction. This is ambition. This is a drive. This is a success mindset.”
Really? Let me ask you something. When does ambition become addiction?
Simple: when you can’t stop. When you get something and immediately need the next thing. When your peace depends on achieving more.
When you have climbed to the top of a mountain, you’re already looking at the next mountain to conquer instead of enjoying the view.
That’s not ambition. That’s compulsion. That’s mental sickness.
We’ve created entire industries celebrating this madness of more. Self-help gurus telling you to “10X your life.” Motivational speakers screaming about “crushing it” and “leveling up.”
Crushing what? Leveling up to where? You’re already here! This is it! But no, we’re too busy climbing invisible ladders to nowhere.
We become the creature that keeps eating and eating, never full.
Don’t Sacrifice the Planet for Greed
And you know what’s really crazy? This “more” disease isn’t just destroying your peace. It’s destroying the only planet we have.
Same mechanism. Same sickness.
The “more” that makes you buy things you don’t need is the same “more” that’s cutting down forests, draining oceans, polluting air, and turning the Earth into a garbage dump.
We’re treating the planet like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. But nobody told us the buffet has a closing time.
One day, and that day is coming soon, we’ll run out. No more oil. No more forests. No clean air to breathe. No more fish in the ocean. And then what?
Then we’ll fight over the scraps. And someone will still be whispering, “Just a little bit more.”
This is not prophecy. This is simple mathematics. You cannot take endlessly from something that is limited. Even a five-year-old child understands this. But we, the “intelligent” humans, have somehow forgotten.
Stop. Just Stop.
So what’s the solution?
Very simple. So simple you won’t believe it.
Stop.
Just stop.
Stop accumulating. Stop planning the next thing. Stop the mental shopping list. Stop postponing your happiness to some imaginary future.
Yes, goals are okay. But are you using your goals to help and make a difference for this planet, or are you using goals to satisfy your self-centered desires?
A goal should be a need, not a greed. Right now, for most people, goals are just an excuse for getting lost in their “mental wanting.”
“I’ll be happy when I get the promotion.”
“I’ll be peaceful when I have more money.”
“I’ll finally relax when I'm at the top of that corporate ladder.”
When, when, when. Always when. Never now.
The Revolutionary Act of Enough
Here’s something radical: what if what you have right now is already enough?
Not eventually enough. Not enough after you fix it. Enough right now.
The apartment you’re living in, the body you’re complaining about, the job you’re tolerating, the relationships you have. What if all of it is already complete?
Try it. Just for one day, live as if you already have everything you need. It's not about positive thinking or pretending, but about an eternal knowing that at your core, you are complete and whole.
You are not just mind and body; you are eternal awareness that exists on this earth for only a brief time.
See what happens when you stop reaching and stop comparing, when you stop shopping for the next thing that will finally make you feel fulfilled.
This terrifies the consumer system, by the way. The entire economy depends on your dissatisfaction. Every advertisement is designed to make you feel incomplete. Social media is engineered to make you feel like everyone else is winning, and you’re losing.
Your contentment is their worst nightmare.
When you’re happy with what you have, they can’t sell you anything. You become useless to the marketplace.
“Just a little bit more” Whisper Will Come
Now, I have to warn you. Even if you do this, even if you find peace, even if you experience enough, the whisper will still come.
“Just a little bit more.”
It’s like a ghost that’s been following humanity for thousands of years. It doesn’t give up easily.
But here’s the thing: you don’t have to fight it. You just have to see it.
The moment you see the whisper for what it is, a mechanical thought, an old pattern, a leftover from evolution when “more” actually helped us survive, it loses its power.
You don’t have to believe every thought that comes into your head. Thoughts are just thoughts. They come, they go. You’re the one who’s here before the thoughts arrive and after they leave.
Be Here Now
Let me tell you the ultimate secret, the thing every enlightened being discovered. There is no “there.” There’s only here.
The future you’re planning, the better version of yourself you’re working toward, the perfect life you’re designing, none of it truly exists. It’s all imagination. It’s like a mental movie. When that future arrives, it will just be the present moment. Therefore, you are shaping your future beautifully by being present in this moment.
The only thing that’s real is this. Right now. This breath. This moment. Everything else is just stories we tell ourselves to avoid being fully alive right now.
You want to know what enlightenment is? It’s not some mystical experience. It’s just being here, fully here, without wishing to be somewhere else.
“Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.”
―Eckhart Tolle,The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Your Deepest Suffering Is a Gift for Awakening
What if all the suffering you experience is actually part of a divine journey, guiding you to your home inward to a truth far greater than the world of mental and physical forms?
The part that lands isn’t that we all chase “more,” it’s that the whole system depends on us staying hungry. Happiness breaks the economy. Contentment threatens the supply chain. If you ever woke up and thought “yeah, this is enough,” half of corporate America would flatline. That whisper for “a little bit more” isn’t ambition, it’s a species glitch that got hijacked by advertisers and political hacks. The minute you stop chasing upgrades, the circus loses its grip. Nothing rattles the Machine more than a human who refuses to play the role of restless consumer.
Excellent!