Profitably Broken You · Engineered to Need (TOC002)
⁘ Created: 2026-10-15 ⁘ Published: 2026-10-15 ⁘ Updated: 2026-10-15
How we are broken and strained in 1001 ways. Internally scattered, externally stressed, pursuing 1000 patches for your condition. But it's a carrot you're chasing — real solutions are elsewhere. Most of those needs are engineered — and you've unwittingly bought into the narrative. A culture where you celebrate and craft identities around your defects.
Classic right effort is exactly the opposite. You try to fix where you're broken and keep it fixed — and you strive to improve, to become a well-rounded and whole human being. Instead of fixating on your designer brokenness as the meaning of your life. When your basic needs are met, you've landed fine and well. Then cultivate your balance.
How we are broken in a thousand ways and more. But that's all right. It's good for the economy, you see. The more broken you think of yourself, the more needs you have. And the more needs you have, the more products and services you can be offered. If people were internally in balance, feeling wholesome and at ease, and externally satisfied with the basic necessities of life, the wheels of economy would grind to a halt.
Then imagine, if we could engineer people to feel more broken, or create more needs. Oh wait, we're already doing that. Then imagine, if these needs were felt as chronic, if people were in a permanent state of dissatisfaction. If these shortcomings and needs were crafted into the identities we affirm for ourselves. Oh wait, but we're already doing that also.
We've successfully crafted a culture, affirming, validating, and encouraging your brokenness. Then why is that, and why must we all become increasingly broken? Simply, because we are unable to conceive of economic stability. It must all increase. GDP must be on the rise, or the world will grind to a halt.
Now this sort of a stance, affirming, embracing and even celebrating your brokenness, is the polar opposite of the classic "right effort". Where you recognize your broken mental states and try to eliminate them, and try to prevent new broken mental states from emerging. And where you try to cultivate the wholesome mental states that are yet absent, and hold on tight and nurture the ones that have already risen.
In time, this sort of an approach makes you a more wholesome individual. If, on the other hand, you keep celebrating your shortcomings and embracing every new need marketed for you, your brain is scattered in a thousand directions as you chase for the solutions. There are, obviously, no real solutions there. Just an endless chase for the carrot.
In that process, if your brain increasingly disintegrates and even breaks down, that's alright – acceptable collateral. Your internal mental states, no matter how messed up, are only classed as a disorder if they prevent you from operating as a productive member of the society. So then, the world keeps on escalating, brains will be sacrificed, a mad race 'til the terminal. Winner takes it all. Takes what exactly? A world left burning in our wake.
Then friends, take a moment, reconsider the narrative the world keeps on serving for you from all directions. Chances are the mainstream narrative isn't there for your well-being. Instead, it's there to exploit you and to sap you dry. This here message is not very popular because it challenges the bottom line of the status quo. Be that as it may, facts are facts and we call it as we see it. That's all.