The more we 'progress’ the more we suffer.

[caption id="attachment_10314" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Julius Bahnsen[/caption]

“One step forward in one respect often is a step backward in another respect. The wounds civilization cures it also inflicts. The real motor of historical ‘evolution’, as Julius Bahnsen says, is the striving for greater comfort and prosperity in life. People are not satisfied with their lot, with what their parents had in the past, and they want to make things better for themselves. But this very striving creates new needs, so that we are no longer satisfied with the simple life of the past; and with the growth of needs there comes more sources of dissatisfaction. There is indeed an interplay, a direct proportion, between development and the receptivity and sensitivity to pain, so that the more we 'progress’ the more we suffer.”

- Frederick Beiser, Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy 1860-1900 (2016)

“Man is a self-conscious nothing.”

Julius Bahnsen