Does all this strife and talk, all these opinions and countless books, lead to anything? Is there progress? Let’s take our healthcare as an example, something so much more advanced than even 60 years ago, let alone 50000 years ago.

It’s safe to assume that we are kept alive longer because of modern medical advances, but it’s harder to say that we live healthier or significantly longer because of it. People also lived to eighty or older in the Middle Ages, just not as many; the average lifespan was much lower because a large percentage of children never reached adulthood.

Some say that hunter-gatherers were healthier because they had a more varied diet; they probably ate more nutritionally than most of us do now, but they also died earlier from diseases we can now easily treat. It seems that the constant search for answers has benefited our health; we eat less varied, but live longer because of our knowledge.

But living healthily is one thing; for most, it’s important, but many accept life as it is and are blessed with a positive attitude. Ignorance can also be a blessing. The loss of your health, a newborn, or a brother was also felt 50000 years ago, and the feeling of grief probably wasn’t much different from what we would feel today. However, for them, it was primarily unexplained, and the idea of living healthier and eating less red meat would never have come up. They probably worried about why they died, but not in a way that we can imagine, though they imagine in the same way.

I believe it’s essential for a percentage of the smartest people to research how diseases work and how we can prevent and cure them, not because it will make us happier, but because we are capable of doing so. This “because we can do it” research is important in many fields, but you can probably think of some areas where it is not.

So, strife and talk are important, but only in themselves, not because there’s a specific goal we can reach. In other words, progress can occur on the edges of our existence, but our fundamental experience will stay the same.