Blood & Ink: Pathological Emptiness

“A lot of the progress impulse is a pathological result of emptiness.”

– Daniel Schmachtenberger

This sentence took a moment to say, glossed over in an interview as quickly as it was spoken...

It shook me.

I love that he used pathological. In the medical sense, pathological means ‘involving, caused by, or of the nature of a disease’. It can also mean ‘obsessive, compulsive’, like pathological gambling.

The progress impulse as a symptom of the psycho-spiritual disease of emptiness.

Banger.

He was referring to individuals and the collective.

Maybe you can call the ‘individual progress impulse’ a ‘neurotic growth need’. There are many people whose names have become synonymous with a kind of masochistic, self-destructive discipline/growth orientation (Goggins, Jocko, you know). The fuel source is self-degradation paired with emptiness (so they say).

This is mirrored beautifully in the collective Western psyche.

Progress at all costs. Such a ferocious growth orientation that it begins to feel—more and more—like it’s less about pursuing a beautiful future, and more about running away from the present. Every ‘invention’ or ‘creation’, no matter how frivolous, mundane, toxic, or evil, is heralded as a divine incarnation of the Holy Principle of Progress.

And this is why many people argue that the real transformation humanity and the individual must undergo is psycho-spiritual, not technological.

It’s the trap of hedonic adaptation taken to its extreme, fueled by AI-benders and extractive production. ‘Filling up’ the world out there with stuff will not ‘fill up’ the hole in your soul.

Unfortunately, there’s another problematic outcome: I meet a lot of people who view any desire for progress/growth as pathological.

They no longer have any frame in them that can see the desire for growth, productivity, or progress as healthy or wholesome.

This is a tragedy.

The progress impulse fueled by emptiness is self-destructive. The lack of a progress impulse entirely in some ways shows you’ve already been destroyed. There is a middle way to be found.

Everything healthy and unhindered in nature has an impulse toward growth, expansion, light, healing, and full expression.

Become very quiet. Find joy and healing, and listen to the quiet impulse inside of you that seeks the light, that wants to play, to contribute to the world—from a place of wholeness, excitement, joy, purpose, and passion.

This orientation makes progress the outcome.

The progress impulse as a pathological result of wholeness.

Let’s find that,
EB.