> We're not on the earth to "do great things" or "achieve progress" or any of that crap. That's for people who have some special enthusiasm which the rest of us need not share, or, as Bertrand Russell says, for the elite who want us to labor for them. If one builds one's morality or sense of virtue on doing stuff one is a self-whipping slave and probably ready to become a slave driver for other people too.

Thank goodness there are people who do build their morality on "doing stuff": surgeons, cancer researchers, etc.

Some people innovate, and some (most) maintain. A healthy society needs a spectrum of endeavour.

I think our fundamental problem is that many of us do work that does not feel meaningful, and it seems that a lot of meaningful work is not respected and compensated as it should be.