Is Growth Important?
John Ink2Quill Editiorial
www.ink2quill.com

Is growth important? Looking at this question through the lens of our culture, the western culture there are many things to consider. Let me explain. In a culture where people are encouraged to accumulate wealth and things to the sky we will inevitably believe that growth should go on forever. It should go on until it is stopped. The point at which things cannot grow any more is non-existent or never thought of. In short, growth is a good thing that should always be encouraged at ant cost. So, do you see anything wrong with this belief because there is plenty wrong? In the real world, I feel, it is far smarter to manage well resources, wealth and other things. A company that chases profits at all costs is a menace to societies as a whole. And yet the shareholders would have a company chase profits at any cost.

So the truth of it is that some growths are good while others are not. A company that chases profit by creating better products or inventing new ones is growing in a healthy way. Companies that chase profits by cutting legal or ethical corners are a cancer to societies. For example, a company that dumps its waste in rivers to save transportation costs to a dump is safeguarding their profits at the expense of society. Not all types of growth are good.

One type of beautiful growth is the growth of a person. Not just physical maturation but intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth. There is always room for personal growth and that is a beautiful thing. You need only remember the time you read a book that had a huge impact on you and made you question the world and the society you lived in. The classics often have this effect on readers. Whether the book informs you of what is going on in the world or how the world works or encourages you in a certain direction in your life the effects of a good book can be profound. Historians say that The Iliad had a huge effect on many ancient leaders the way The Bible, The Koran and the Talmud did centuries later. These works of art have continued to have influence the spiritual growth of people and culture.

So, how does a person grow? This is an answerable question too. Things like travel, reading, learning new skills and relationships are the most obvious. Sages would add things like life obstacles and responsibilities, hardships and challenges to that list. I agree with all of these but I think that relationships is the most underrated of them all. It’s underrated in terms of it’s importance to the growth of a person. How we interact with other people and treat them is what can build healthy emotional development and even character.

I have to say that dealing with people who are well travelled, who read or who have life experience is much more fun than people who have never sought personal growth of any kind. There are some people out there who lived a very interesting life and when they share their stories with you it’s like they are taking you along for the ride. People who read a good book are also great fun too because when they describe that book to you and you end up enjoying it too.

I noticed that people who never travelled or rarely during their lives are, for the most part, well adjusted in their communities. Their neighbors know them and like or hate them according to past events between them. I know two people like that and when I talk to them I soon realize that something is not quite right. Some part of them is not developed or under-developed. When the TV tells them to root for such and such government action they root without giving it much thought. At work, in the office, they are basically flunkies who do anything to safeguard their paycheck, their place at the trough. Talking to them is frustrating because so many of their opinions were not given much thought to but merely repeated from TV or the internet. When I look at them I see people who have so much intellectual, spiritual growing to do and don’t seem to care. As a matter of fact they don’t care much about anything. Something inside of them is sleeping. It really is a shame.

So, to sum things up, I think that the growth of a person should be encouraged but it cannot happen all the time over time. It’s like a breathing process with ebbs and flows of activity. You have a growth spell then a period of stagnation and so on. That is what healthy growth for a person is. Constant, ascending growth over time is just not sustainable or realistic.

I think that A.I. is in a period of drastic growth and we don’t know when it will end. We also don’t know what things will look like when it has completed its first growth spurt. How much of society it will sink itself into is a good question. Either way healthy growth is a kind of breathing process.

Seeing how fast A.I. is growing I really think that it understands this concept very well.

Written by John Ink2Quill

I2Q Blogs / Opinions AI / ink2quill / john / quill /