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comment by c_hawkthorne
c_hawkthorne  ·  2962 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why do we strive for growth?

I think a big part of corporate growth is to please the stockholders. The goal of a company is to make money, and in a world as interconnected as ours, you have to be growing, expanding, or risk getting passed, having your stock drop, and losing value for your stockholders. Artists and musicians are a different kind of growth. They can't grow capital per se, but volume of songs, art, etc. If your favorite band only released one album, would you as a consumer be content? I don't think so. You'd want more music from them, but that costs money. They need a large base of listeners to be able to afford more studio time and money to tour. Same with artists, costs of supplies are high, so they need to produce a lot and put on shows often.

The idea of sustainability is an interesting one. Can one ever really be sustainable? I don't have facebook, twitter, etc. and already, I've noticed that many of my high school friends aren't in as much contact with me. Is this because I don't have the connectivity of social media? Maybe. Maybe it is because distance is unsustainable for one person without tools to help them. Maybe it is because they were weak friendships founded on seeing one another every day, suffering through crappy teachers together. Maybe it is because I myself am not putting in work to keep the relationships going. For some reason, they are unsustainable. What is sustainability? It is the ability to hold steady at one point, not losing, not gaining. Is life ever really sustainable? Rarely. Jobs change, co-workers change, friends change. Life is constantly moving. I think that one can be more constant, but perfectly sustainable? No.

Is there anything wrong with someone wanting to hold a small audience? Not at all, but their audience will almost certainly only be small live shows, they probably won't be recording albums. If they do, there is a slim chance they make it big. They can't control that. And if they want to stay small, they won't want to risk making it big. They also will only have their music as a side project, not as a full time job. I don't think success is defined by ever-increasing quantity. I think success is having a happy, content life. If you're happy, then you're successful. I feel as if there is an inherent problem with constant advertisements that lead us to believe that if we don't have a certain product, we are unsuccessful, but that is just going back to corporate growth trying to make money by making you feel inferior. That is leading to a growing mindset that more money is more success when it really isn't.

Why do I try to grow personally? I want to push myself. I want to be the best me I can be. This means setting goals and reaching them. It means growing as a person both personally and professionally. I have a lot to learn, and I will learn through setting goals and growing as I reach them. I strive for growth to be the best me I can be.



ButterflyEffect  ·  2962 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm an outlier in that one album would be totally fine, it might be a bummer but if that's all that happened and it was good, why not be anything but content? I also think as far as the music thing goes you're vastly overestimating the cost associated with recording an album, unless you're going for a very...I don't know...major? sound. Same thing for touring, unless you're Pomplamousse, touring ain't a ton of fun, at least not as much as it's portrayed by our classic rock idols. But you can do it in a frugal way and make the most of it. Even in your comment you're going back to the concept of "making it big", that's a central tenet of the argument. Why is that even at the forefront of the discussion?

Life is constantly moving and not perfectly sustainable, I think we can agree with that and I can agree with growing as a person and learning as much as possible. Those are great things to strive for. However, a lot of this is revolving around more more more, happiness comes after, not before.

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