I'd like to think it's about cultural priorities. While in the perspective of the Western frame it would seem "irrational" to eschew modern advancements - it's

I'd like to think it's about cultural priorities. While in the perspective of the Western frame it would seem "irrational" to eschew modern advancements - it's just that, a perspective of the Western Frame and not objective. Even elements within the WF such as Marx and cohort identified generally negative elements like alienation. As an aside, there are people like the Sentinelese - a people contemporaneous with us still living in the stone age evidence that we don't need modernity, industry, and so on in order to continue as a species. Toynbee on the Genesis of Civilization via Wikipedia [0]: He argues that for civilizations to be born, the challenge must be a golden mean; that excessive challenge will crush the civilization, and too little challenge will cause it to stagnate. One of the big history book authors has an oft-repeated joke, one permutation of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/bsnud/is_this_a_joke_or_a_moral_story/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/bsnud/is_this_a_joke... Why do all that work when you could just sit your ass on a beach or in a nice Mediterranean-esque corner of the world? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History#Genesis_and_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History#Genesis_and...