In my previous article, I show that collapse is inevitable unless we radically change course. Today, I take us one step further and explain why even radical change may not be enough—because the very force driving collapse is the same one we cannot abandon: the pursuit of human fulfillment.
We are caught in a trap:
- If we try to give everyone everything they need and want, we will destroy the planet.
- If we try to stop people from needing or wanting things, or limit what they can have, society will tear itself apart.
This is The Impossible Task: peace and happiness depends on satisfying our desires, but doing so pushes the planets beyond its limits and is actually physically impossible. In this article, I unpack the three pillars of this paradox:
- Human wants are unlimited. People always seem to want more.
- When people’s needs and wants aren’t met, it causes dissatisfaction and unrest.
- To have lasting peace and stability, everyone’s needs and wants must be satisfied.
Understanding why these statements hold—and why they spell doom for any purely physical solution—sets the stage for understanding the only possible solution, which I will address in the next article, The Only Path.
1. Human Wants Are Unlimited
1.1 The Economic Foundation of Infinite Demand
From Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations to modern growth theory, economists have noted that no matter how much output an economy generates, people will want more. This isn’t a minor quirk; it is the very foundation of economics.
Because wants are endless, growth becomes the system’s engine, not a mere by-product. That’s why societies measure success by ever-rising GDP, investment, and consumption levels. This growth imperative means that economies must expand continuously to maintain employment, service debt, and fund public services.
Producers and entrepreneurs anticipate these boundless appetites through what Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction: each wave of innovation satisfies existing demands while creating new ones. Luxury items of yesterday—color TVs, personal computers, smartphones—have become today’s necessities, perpetually widening the gap between wants and means.
Bottom line: Infinite demand is not an anomaly—it’s the blueprint. As long as wants expand without limit, every economy will relentlessly chase growth, even when that chase collides with the planet’s finite resources.
1.2 Psychology Makes It Worse
Psychology appears to reinforce this idea. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests that as soon as one level of needs is satisfied, new, higher-level needs emerge. Moreover, a satisfied need does not motivate behaviour; people are motivated by unsatisfied needs, leading to an endless cycle of emerging wants.
Later psychological concepts like the hedonic treadmill similarly note that gains in satisfaction from acquiring things are often temporary as expectations rise. This explains why even dramatic improvements in wealth or comfort only temporarily boost well-being before expectations reset.
Additionally, social comparison now operates on an unprecedented global scale, as social media platforms and influencer culture broadcast idealized snapshots of others’ lives—from exotic vacations to luxury possessions—constantly shifting our personal benchmarks of “enough” and heightening feelings of relative deprivation. Algorithm-driven feeds amplify content that triggers envy and status-seeking behaviors, so each new acquisition or accomplishment quickly becomes the minimum standard, fueling an unbroken cycle of escalating aspirations.
Bottom line: No matter whether we’re trying to meet our basic needs or keep up with others—once we get what we want, we soon want something else. It’s a loop of ever-growing cravings that no policy or fix can break.
1.3 Manufactured Consumption
Furthermore, wants are not merely inherent; they are actively manufactured in modern society. Corporations and advertisers create and amplify what Herbert Marcuse called false needs—desires that serve the economy’s growth imperative rather than genuine well-being.
Product design and market strategies reinforce this cycle:
- Planned obsolescence ensures items wear out or feel outdated sooner, compelling repeat purchases.
- Personalized marketing, powered by data analytics, targets individuals with offers finely tuned to their vulnerabilities, making every ad feel personally urgent.
- Addictive feedback loops use a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule—unpredictable notifications, surprise rewards, and social validation—to keep consumers checking apps and chasing the next “hit”.
Bottom line: Insatiability is not just a human trait but a cultural construct—engineered through advertising, design, and data-driven tactics to fuel endless growth, even when it distracts from deeper human needs like creativity or autonomy.
1.4 Why Voluntary Restraint Doesn’t Scale
Ancient philosophies and modern movements—from Buddhist renunciation and Stoic self-discipline to contemporary minimalism—show individuals voluntarily can curb their desires. Marshall Sahlins’s study of hunter-gatherer societies famously described them as the original affluent society, content with limited needs and abundant leisure. Minimalist trends and voluntary simplicity experiments demonstrate that personal well-being often improves when people consciously reduce consumption.
Yet these examples remain marginal and could in fact become a danger to a system built for growth:
- Jobs and services depend on growth: If people buy less, businesses lay off workers and government revenues fall, threatening public services like healthcare and pensions.
- Debt needs growth to pay off: Loans are based on the expectation that incomes will rise over time. If spending slows, more people can’t repay debts, risking banking collapses.
- Habits are hard to change: Choosing a simpler life works for small groups but doesn’t catch on broadly. Most people stick with familiar patterns, especially when money is tight.
- Backlash to limits: Rules that try to curb spending—like higher taxes or product bans—are often perceived as infringements on personal freedom and prosperity, fueling political polarization rather than solidarity.
Collectively, these factors show why individual or localized restraint cannot scale without major upheaval.
Bottom line: The global economic and financial architecture—built for perpetual growth—would buckle under the weight of mass restraint. Without transforming the system itself, voluntary limitation remains a personal virtue, not a scalable solution.
2. Unmet Needs and Wants Lead to Unrest
2.1 The Link Between Dissatisfaction and Instability
History shows that it’s not just absolute poverty but broken expectations that spark unrest. When people feel promised progress, fairness, or basic security slipping away, disillusionment can ignite mass protests.
In 18th-century Europe, food riots erupted when the price of grain outpaced wages, signaling that the social contract had failed even before widespread starvation set in. Fast-forward to 2019 Chile’s Estallido Social, where a small subway fare hike triggered nationwide demonstrations against entrenched inequality and stagnant living standards. In 2020, George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis ignited the Black Lives Matter protests—one of the largest movements in U.S. history, driven by outrage over systemic racism. Even more recently, Sri Lanka’s 2022 fuel and food crisis—despite government assurances of stability—led citizens to storm key government buildings in a desperate bid for change.
Across these moments, the spark is less about sheer need and more about people realizing that the promises of dignity, fairness, or opportunity have been broken, fueling collective anger and demands for reform.
2.2 Theories of Conflict and Deprivation
Social scientists have long argued that unrest springs not merely from absolute shortages but from the frustration of expectations and the thwarting of core needs. Three foundational theories illuminate how unmet wants translate into instability:
- Marx’s Class Conflict. Karl Marx saw capitalist society as a battleground between two classes: those who own productive resources (the bourgeoisie) and those who must sell their labor (the proletariat). Because resources and opportunities remain scarce, workers continually clash with owners over wages, working conditions, and the distribution of wealth. This enduring struggle, Marx predicted, would intensify as inequality deepened, ultimately leading to revolutionary upheaval when workers’ frustrations could no longer be contained.
- Gurr’s Relative Deprivation. In Why Men Rebel (1970), Ted Robert Gurr showed that violent collective action correlates most strongly with relative deprivation—the gap between what people feel they deserve and what they actually achieve. It is not the poorest who rebel, but those whose expectations outrun their realities: when rising aspirations (for income, respect, political voice) are dashed, resentment builds. If that frustration persists, it can erupt into protests, riots, or revolution.
- Burton’s Conflict: Human Needs Theory. John Burton—and later Johan Galtung—argued that some needs are non-negotiable: identity, autonomy, security, and recognition. When these fundamental needs are denied, no amount of policy tinkering or material concession can fully resolve the resulting conflict. Groups deprived of respect or political agency, for example, often engage in protracted, intractable struggles because the denial itself strikes at the core of their dignity and self-worth.
Bottom line: Persistent gaps between people’s aspirations and their realities generate the grievances that fuel social unrest. Addressing material shortages alone is insufficient unless the deeper expectations and needs of individuals and communities are also met.
2.3 It’s Not Just About Basics
Even when basic needs are generally met, widening inequality and perceived unfairness can ignite unrest in affluent societies.
- In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement rallied around the slogan “We are the 99%,” as protesters decried the vast wealth gap between corporate elites and ordinary Americans—sparking sit-ins in Zuccotti Park and inspiring solidarity encampments in dozens of cities worldwide.
- Later, France’s Yellow Vests mobilized in 2018 over a fuel tax hike, but the movement quickly expanded into mass demonstrations demanding fairer taxation, higher wages, and more affordable housing—underscoring how even small policy changes can become catalysts when social inequalities run deep.
- Rent strikes have emerged in multiple cities over the years: London tenants in 2016–17 and again during the 2020 pandemic withheld rent to protest soaring housing costs and poor living conditions; Berlin residents staged rent strikes in 2019 against exploitative rent hikes; and in 2021, New York City tenants organized rent strikes demanding rent freezes amid stalled wage growth and skyrocketing rents.
Bottom line: Stability requires more than basic survival; it demands a sense that people’s legitimate aspirations are met. When expectations fall short, frustration turns to unrest—and no amount of resources can prevent conflict if perceptions of fairness and hope collapse.
3. Peace Requires Satisfying All Needs and Wants
3.1 Why Partial Fulfillment Isn’t Enough
Offering some but not all needs breeds envy and division. In post-crisis Greece, austerity measures stabilized budgets but left many citizens feeling betrayed—rescue funds saved banks, not households—fueling support for extremist parties on both the left and right. Similarly, targeted welfare programs improve living standards for recipients but can inflame resentment among those just above the cutoff, creating new social rifts.
3.2 The Cost of Restraint
Attempts to curb consumption—such as Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness policies or India’s proposed bans on certain advertisements—often encounter public resistance. People see limits as an infringement on freedom and progress. In Costa Rica, water-use restrictions sparked protests when citizens felt their daily lives were unfairly constrained, even amid a drought.
3.3 Why Redistribution and Regulation Fail
Redistributive policies—universal basic income, progressive taxation—ease poverty but cannot halt the engine of insatiable wants. Political leaders tied to GDP growth face pressure to loosen constraints, reigniting consumption cycles. When China relaxed its one-child policy and increased social welfare, stimulus efforts reignited housing bubbles and consumption booms, illustrating that loosening one lever simply revives another growth driver.
Bottom line: Achieving lasting peace means meeting everyone’s expectations, not just subsistence. But in the physical world, doing so either starves economies or ravages the planet—leaving no middle path to sustainable stability.
Conclusion: We’re Trapped in an Unsolvable Paradox
Our civilization seems to be trapped in an unsolvable paradox:
- Infinite wants propel an endless drive for growth and expansion.
- Unmet wants spark frustration, instability, and conflict.
- Fulfilled wants push ecosystems to collapse and resources beyond recovery.
This impossible task—to maintain peace and prosperity by satisfying every desire in the physical world—is mathematically and ecologically unachievable. No policy package, economic reform, or cultural revival can reconcile these conflicting demands within planetary boundaries.
We face a stark reality: either we accept eventual collapse from ecological overshoot, or we risk societal breakdown from chronic dissatisfaction and unrest. Both outcomes end in failure.
When meeting everyone’s needs in the real world is a dead end, what’s left? Are we well and trully fucked? In the next article, I will explore The Only Path that can offer a viable solution.