Luxuries have also been the death of quite a few empires. From Rome to the Ottomans, they all crashed under their own weight after they reached a point where the empire ( and it’s ruling class) were much less interested in expanding the empire, than in the luxuries their existence had to offer …
I suppose it functions the same for empires, countries as well as individual human beings.
Yes, life is about survival…And furthermore, struggle seems to be the one thing that gives meaning to a human life. IF here is no struggle, we soon loose our meaning, is there is no struggle, we seen not to be able to be happy.
Just look at the suicide-rates in various societies…the one thing that can be easily noticed is that the rate of suicides is much, much higher in countries like Sweden , Norway or Britain, then it is in, what most people still call “third world” societies…
Or even within individual societies themselves… The US for example- there are very few suicides among the poor and homeless groups but the numbers keep rising the better-off people are…
Down here ( In the Balkans) they used to say that you cannot find a sad Gypsy ( The Roma are traditionally the poorest part of societies ) — I do not know about that, but I know that in the past 20+ years I can not recall any single case of a Roma committing suicide, despite the fact that their lives are much more difficult than the lives of the rest of the population..
The more “Developed” and comfortable a society becomes, the more unhappy people there are. It seems that we have been programmed to not feel good if everything is OK, if our lives , our finances, our futures are 100% secure and there is no danger of things going wrong…
Or, even on a different level… there are much fewer instances of cheating spouses among the poor population than there are among the middle, or upper classes… The ones who have nothing to do all day seem to become unhappy with their lives ( the lives they aimed for to start with)
It is, sort of, Ironic…. the thing we are taught to strive for, is the thing which, ultimately, makes us sublimely unhappy