<p>Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
By never being satisfied with what we have, we are never content. Our focus on growth, progress, and the idea of “more” makes us fundamentally unhappy, always seeking more than what we need. I used to believe greatly in “growth,” but I’ve changed my mind. It now makes sense to me that growth for growth’s sake creates a fundamental dissatisfaction with what I have.
Adapted from Ron McDonald, The Spirituality of Community Life: When We Come ’Round Right</p>
<p>Assignment: Do growth and progress make us happy or do they lead to dissatisfaction? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
<p>Progress to us will never stop. We will never be satisfied with what we already have. But it’s the demand for progresses that give us what we have today. By incessantly improving our lives, we have saved million of lives from poverty, disease and insured that our grandchildren will live a comfortable life long afterward.
For example, the Industrial Revolution, which took place in the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period during which rural, agrarian society of British and American became industrial and urban. Prior to The Industrial Revolution people manufactured goods indoor, using hand tools and basic machines. Industrialized shifted them into specialized machines which mass produced inside factories. Not just that, Industrialization also improved transportation, communication and banking. The Industrial revolution has given us an increasing volume and variety of manufactured goods and improved our living standards. By wanting more than just small amount of hand-made goods and agrarian life, we have made our lives much better. The fact that we want more than we have had given us the lives that we have today.
Another example is 12 years a slave, a memoir by Solomon Northup in 1853. Solomon Northup was born a free man in New York, but he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. He was treated badly and forced to work in plantations. After 12 years of fighting to freedom by contact to his friends and family which could have revealed his identity as an educated man and imprisoned him forever, Solomon finally achieved his freedom and returned to his family. If Solomon has given up the fight and accepted his fate as a slave, he would have never been able to live a life of freedom.
As seen in the examples above, The Industrial revolution that better our lives, Solomon Northup who never give up on freedom, we can see the fact that we never satisfied with what we have had given us more happiness than dissatisfaction.</p>