Your top 5 sci-fi movies (and why)

[Paul Farquhar]

Society doesn't let poor people have those things either. Do you think people work jobs because they want to work?

No, I think people work jobs because they need to work. Not for money, but to give them meaning. Without meaning, life is, quite literally, meaningless.

The only people in the world who are truly free are the idle rich.

The thing I've noticed about the rich is they are very rarely idle. If people stopped working as soon as they had enough stuff, there would be a lot more to go around. But that's not how people, when given freedom, behave. Instead they go on accumulating more and more, because that is what gives their existence meaning.

It applies to the more complex animals too. At the better zoos, the major animal welfare issue the keepers have to deal with is boredom. They will typically do this by providing enrichment - which basically means getting the animals to work for their food.

 

[môrgondír]

think most billionaire businessmen are either driven by some form of mania or addiction

It is a kind of unconscious self-defense mechanism.

The pursuit of greater wealth, power, or fame acts as a distraction, and a hedge against the fear of death. It's a bid for immortality.

 

[Autumnal]

Because also, if you want to become any kind of celebrity you have to sign the devil's book and give up first your integrity and then any trace of genuine creativity without mass market appeal; and also be sure never to say anything that either the left, the right, or overprotective parents of any description would find objectionable.

Over the decades, I’ve known several fairly successful folks - George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Harry Turtledove, Barbara Hambly, Dan Abnett, John Scalzi - for whom this doesn’t seem true at all. Just the opposite, in fact. Most of these owe some of their fame and success to being opinionated and backing that up with efforts at social change to match. Nor have any of them been pressured a lot to get bland and generic.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That interpretation makes Satan the saviour, god evil, and Heaven, just Hell from a different perspective.

Not like maltheism isn't a thing.