(November 15, 2023 at 8:12 am)Ahriman Wrote: Appears, yeah. But not necessarily. If most (or all) of the members of a society are "making themselves useful", but the society is stagnating or getting worse, then it isn't really good that all those people are making themselves useful.
Yes, that seems to me exactly the kind of question that should be addressed.
When we call something useful, we need to ask "useful for what?" There is always an implied aim.
In discussing college classes, "useful" generally means that it's directly applicable to a money-making career. More and more, college is seen as exclusively aimed at career prep of this type. But it's a philosophical question as to whether people should learn other things too.
And since a thing that is useful always points to a goal that is beyond itself, then it makes sense to ask what the end point of that aiming is. What you say is exactly right here: if everyone is "making themselves useful," but people are getting more and more miserable, then we need to reconsider our goals.
