Why We Want More and How It’s Destroying Us

Climate, AI, Extinction, Money, Inequality & the Search for Freedom

My name is Mikko Rakushin Kendō Ijäs. I am an artist, researcher, and Zen Buddhist priest. My work spans from studying human evolution to exploring the depths of creativity, spirituality, and the structures that shape our world. Over the years, my journey has taken me through art, academia, and Zen practice—from research at Harvard to Bearing Witness retreats in Auschwitz and Street Retreats in Helsinki.

This series of writings is based on an unpublished book I have been working on—a book that examines the complex systems that govern our lives, from economics and technology to human psychology and spirituality. The themes I explore here are the same ones that have shaped my research, my practice, and my understanding of the world.

We live in an era of deep contradictions: endless innovation yet growing dissatisfaction, economic growth yet persistent inequality, technological progress yet environmental collapse. Through this series, I aim to reflect on these paradoxes, offering views that are grounded in both research and lived experience.

I invite you to read, reflect, and engage. Not from a place of certainty, but from a place of open awareness—what in Zen we call Not-Knowing. Let’s bear witness to the world as it is, so we can act with wisdom, compassion, and love.

Originally published in 15 February 2025 on Substack https://substack.com/@mikkoijas/p-157207211

Zen and the Art of Dissatisfaction 

Part 1. We Are All Prisoners

We are cooperative and innovative creatures. Humanity has been successful in many ways, yet dissatisfaction gnaws at us. This dissatisfaction makes us prisoners waiting for a better tomorrow, for a moment when everything will be perfect. But such a day will never come.

Dissatisfaction has driven us forward, yet at the same time, it is an illusion. We believe we are moving toward an inevitable peak of progress, but in reality, we are merely following paths we have built ourselves—sometimes misguided ones, sometimes wiser routes. We have created and abandoned cultures, innovations, and ways of life time and again.

But where does our creativity stem from? What truly drives us? Is it benevolent progress or endless greed and delusions? Dissatisfaction takes hold of our minds even when everything appears fine on the surface. We want more money, more fame, better working conditions, more benefits. Wages and the economy must continuously grow. But why? What is this force leading us, and in what direction?

Our economy relies on outdated metrics. The gross domestic product (GDP), developed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, has guided the world for nearly a century. However, it fails to account for everything: Wikipedia, which we develop and read for free, music and paintings we often enjoy without charge. Volunteer work and activism that drives all of our rights, nature and the well-being it provides. All of this exists, yet it remains invisible in economic measurements. And still, we expect economic growth. 

Our dissatisfaction is visible everywhere. We wage war against evil, bomb cities, and then wonder why refugees want to live among us. We buy chicken after seeing a recipe on TV, unwittingly participating in the meat industry’s cycle that breeds new diseases. We complain when pandemics confine us to our homes.

This series of writings will examine these complex systems that intertwine: climate and ecology, technological development, and economic injustice. We cannot change the world alone, but we can understand it better. Politicians do not experience the daily lives of ordinary people, nor can we expect them to understand its hardships. Their world is different from that of a cleaner who has to apply for support to afford dental care or an artist who must lie about their profession to receive unemployment benefits. Many of the examples in this series are from Finland and applicable only in Finnish context.

But how do we form our opinions? We think we learn by reading, but true understanding comes through experience. We react emotionally to politics, news, and social media. We get angry, but we do not always pause to ask: Why does someone think this way? Why is someone forced to beg on the streets? Why does the world’s richest man want to go to Mars while mocking politicians?

American Zen teacher Bernie Glassman encouraged approaching the world through Not-Knowing. To remain open, to listen, to Bear Witness, and to act based on what we internalise–through love. This may help us break free from the chains of our own minds.

We consider many things immutable: nations, the economy, human rights, the necessity of war. But nothing is permanent. Everything flows and changes. British physicist Helen Czerski notes that nothing alive can achieve true balance—stagnation would mean death. Even world peace is subject to constant change.

Dutch historian Rutger Bregman reminds us that the poor are not lazy; they simply lack money. Poverty is not a moral failing but a societal structure. And while Steven Pinker argues that the world is better today than ever before, we cannot turn a blind eye to new crises.

Humanity now faces several existential threats. The greatest is the environmental crisis: climate change, pollution, and mass extinction of species. The second is the imbalance between technological advancement and economic power. New political crises have also merged through authoritarian regimes. All of these are also intertwined, or interconnected. We must understand these structures and their effects if we want to build peace, and a more sustainable future.

Dissatisfaction will not disappear, but maybe we could learn to see it with new eyes. We can stop waiting for a better tomorrow and face the world as it is—and act in its favour—through love.