Entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, has a favourite interview question. Tell me something that's true that almost nobody agrees with you on? What's your answer?
Growth has become a religion and it’s destroying everything. It’s not often questioned, but I believe it shapes everything.
The idea that if something isn’t growing, it’s failing. That more is always better.
And I don’t think it is.
This thinking shows up everywhere. You can see it in how platforms shift from serving people (useful) to chasing attention (growth).
In how work becomes less about meaning and more about the bottom line. In how art becomes content, politics becomes self serving (rather than selfless), and even how healthcare is just another way to make a quick buck.
Even the planet becomes an endless resource to pillage.
This isn’t a glitch in the system, it’s the system itself. Growth as the root cause of all evil.
I’m not anti-business. I just don’t believe that everything has to endlessly expand.
What about, maybe, doing “one thing well”?
Most of the world’s problems, when you get down to it, come from treating growth like a religion, and profit like its god.