Self-preservation Vs Sustainability

[hinawashi]

If the ego is all about preserving itself, then why do we engage in non-sustainable lifestyles?

I was reading up on the topic of "late capitalism" and how different people from different time periods interpret it. From the current perspective, it's about making the rich richer and the poor poorer, but it's obviously not sustainable in the long run. Not because there's going to be some leftist commie uprising but we'll probably end up destroying ourselves if we keep this up. We built this economy to satisfy our desires, but why are we ruining our lives with the very system that we designed to help us?

That's just an example on a collective level. We also have individual-level problems like addictions. So that brings back to my original question. Shouldn't the whole purpose of self-preservation be sustainable? If not, then where is the difference? Where does this chain of events fall apart?

[Saarah]

@hinawashi I guess it depends on the level of consciousness. Both are ways of going about serving the ego, but the sustainable one is likely a more conscious program, or a more developed paradigm, like going through spiral dynamics stages. I’d imagine having a sustainable way would mean needing to consider all the other egos too, whereas the other is all about my immediate ego. Even though addictions seem like an obvious non-serving exercise, it does give immediate gratification and that’s the only concern there. To get to the concern for a sustainable approach it’d probably need to face up to and realise the limits of immediate ego gratification. The rich getting richer for example, might need to see how that’s not doing anything for them, their awareness might raise to wider concern. Do you think that’s the case?  

[LaucherJunge]

@hinawashi
Your answer lies in the wording already, self-preservation. Even at this rate it is sustainable for quite some years for the people who are actually in charge and are old enough to not be alive anymore when it turns really bad. Also you have to keep in mind that people who are in charge usually think that even if they changed their ways there would be someone else benefiting from it and keeping the damage going anyway, so why wouldn't they just stay on top themselves. The rich get richer is just a flaw in the system, who knows maybe intentional but that is not the point. The problem is that corporations have too much power by now, which means that everyone has to contribute to growth who is on top of that corporation and usually there are too many people who wouldn't let someone go in a sustainable direction which leads to decline, even if they managed to do that, the competition would get ahead very fast without such limitations. Take China for example, they don't have many restrictions in anything really so they are making their way to the number 1 power in the world at the moment at the cost of the sustainability which still won't affect the people in charge for quite a while.