Everything we do these days - our lust for ever more comfort

The words of James Howard Kunstler — “Everything we do these days – our lust for ever more comfort, pleasure, and distraction, our refusal to engage with the mandates of reality, our fidelity to cults of technology and limitless growth, our narcissistic national exceptionalism – all of this propels us toward the realm where souls abandon all hope.” — are both a lament and a prophecy. They ring with the tone of a seer who looks upon his age and sees not triumph, but decay wrapped in the garb of progress. Kunstler, a critic of modern illusion, speaks from the threshold where the human spirit has become intoxicated by its own inventions. His warning is not new, but ancient — for in every age, there have been those who mistook comfort for meaning, and power for purpose, only to find themselves wandering in the shadows of their own making.

This quote arises from Kunstler’s lifelong meditation on the modern world’s spiritual and ecological crisis. He sees humanity, in its lust for pleasure and distraction, drifting from the solid ground of reality — building empires of glass and data, worshipping false gods of technology and endless growth. Like the citizens of ancient Rome, who feasted and reveled as their empire crumbled, we too may be dancing upon the edge of ruin, oblivious to the truth that our excess becomes our undoing. His words summon the vision of Dante’s Inferno, where the souls who “abandon all hope” wander forever in a realm of their own delusion — not because they were evil, but because they refused to awaken.

For the ancients knew this well: that comfort breeds weakness, and indulgence blinds the spirit. The philosophers of Greece warned of it, the prophets of Israel thundered against it, and the ascetics of the East turned from it. When men and women forget hardship, when they worship ease, they lose their sense of proportion. The Stoics taught that the mandates of reality — struggle, loss, mortality — are not punishments, but teachers. To flee from them is to flee from wisdom itself. Kunstler’s cry is a call to remembrance — that true strength arises not from convenience, but from discipline; not from abundance, but from humility.

History offers many mirrors to this truth. Consider the fall of Rome, that glittering empire of conquest and comfort. Its citizens, once hardened by duty and virtue, became enamored with pleasure. Bread and circuses dulled their spirit. Their armies grew corrupt, their leaders vain, their culture hollow. The marble temples still shone in the sun, but the heart of the empire had already died. Rome fell not only to invaders, but to its own forgetfulness — its refusal to engage with reality, its addiction to distraction. Kunstler’s vision is the modern echo of that collapse, warning that our towers of technology and our worship of limitless growth may yet be the marble ruins of our time.

Yet within his warning lies not despair, but the seed of renewal. For to see our decline clearly is to begin the path of redemption. If we dare to face the truth — to look upon the emptiness beneath our luxuries, to acknowledge the hunger beneath our entertainment — we may yet find the way back to balance. The ancients taught that every age must rediscover the sacred by stripping away illusion. The way forward, then, is not through more speed, more screens, more growth, but through a return to simplicity, to reverence, to the unadorned truth of being alive.

Kunstler’s mention of “narcissistic national exceptionalism” warns against the pride that blinds nations as it does men. When a people believe themselves beyond reproach, when they mistake their wealth for virtue, they become deaf to the lessons of history. The wise nations — like the wise souls — are those who practice humility. They understand that greatness is not measured by expansion, but by stewardship; not by dominance, but by harmony with the world that sustains them. Pride is the herald of downfall, while gratitude is the root of endurance.

Let this teaching be carried in the hearts of those who listen: the pursuit of endless comfort leads to decay; the pursuit of truth leads to renewal. To live rightly in the modern world, one must learn again the art of restraint. Step away from the glowing idols of distraction. Reconnect with the earth, the body, the silence between moments. Seek meaning not in consumption, but in creation. Face the mandates of reality — the limits of time, the fragility of life — with courage and humility. Only then can the soul recover its strength and return from the edge of despair.

Thus, Kunstler’s warning stands as both elegy and exhortation. If we continue as we are, we shall indeed reach that realm where souls abandon hope, where humanity forgets its sacred essence. But if we awaken — if we learn again to live within limits and honor the truth of our nature — then even from the ruins of excess, we may rise renewed. The fire of wisdom still burns beneath the ashes of comfort. And to those who seek it, the path home is not through progress without end, but through remembrance — the ancient remembrance of what it means to be fully, humbly, and courageously human.