"Be content with what you have" - Is it a good advice? Maybe not

Since ancient times, there have been many philosophies human kind have thought about and have tried to implement in their lives.

Through this long journey, when we are standing on the twenty-first century, just like our technological advances and changes in lifestyle for good, today there are many new challenges as well which we face on both levels, be it on individual level or as humanity.

Challenges we are facing as species is often spared from much philosophical scrutiny, part of the reason might be our intentional negligence when our unique ability of self-consciousness allows us to be selfish at individual level at the cost of species as a whole, we have however though created many philosophies which we face on individual levels.

And as such challenges become more difficult, we create philosophies that enables us to dodge such challenges and move on without feeling guilt.

One such philosophy is when we advise others to not be greedy and be satisfied with what we have and be content :)

While this advise is correct on lots of levels, specially while addressing to the characters of human beings which can ruin them and society, like extreme greed be it for money or status or any materialistic things. However, I feel that often this can also misled us from our evolutionary gift that nature has provided us with, which is intellect and the use of it to know, have curiosity and the urge to apply the knowledge gained to fulfill our growing needs.

For say, had this philosophy been implemented by our ancestors, who used to live probably on trees, and had they been satisfied with what they had, we would never had the scientific knowledges today to build the modern buildings we have built today.

Or had they been content with simply their method of transport which were walking or riding on horses and camels and had they not struggled to feel their growing curiosity and built the wheel, today we would have no cars, bikes, trains or planes!

Hence, I think although we should always be content with what we have in our own abilities and control and have no extreme greed for anything, we should however, appreciate the power of the intellect of human brain and try to expand our abilities in a good way to not remain stagnant and fall in the trap of laziness!

Cheers!