The idea that life is just a competition for resources - even after all this time, and after all this technology we've developed - pisses me off and depresses me.
That's another I had growing up, where I thought the world was better than it really was. I thought that competition for resources was the Bad Old Days, but that modern science and tech, and more compassionate, civilized attitudes and thinking, gave us greater freedom than ever, to make our lives about whatever we wanted them to be about, instead of boring, cold, miserable old competition, that favored people born with certain traits and interests over others. I thought we could finally break away from predetermination.
I thought the entire point of tech, was more or less to free us from competition, so that we could live our lives however we wanted to, and create a safer, more civilized, happier world. But instead the point of it seems to be improving efficiency and profit for the people that own everything already. It has nothing to do with actually improving overall quality of life.
I kind of wish growing up, I was NOT told that I had all this "freedom", and about how great everything is, because more and more, I'm feeling like I really didn't, and it's really not.
It gets me down that a man exists solely to be a provider of resources, and not whatever I want to be - not to explore possibilities and interests. I guess that means I have to crunch numbers, that's my best bet for that (not arguing, I have to do that anyway, I now see what I should have seen all along - that I have no choice - there was never anything to think about), but that's not going to make me happy, interesting to others, or to myself. I'm not going to be able to have much of a personality doing that (but can I get good enough at anything else to have a personality either, or was I always genetically predestined to be a boring person, and my only choice was boring and comfortable, or boring and miserable? But that's another tangent...). Most people who do that, seem to just be into their favorite sports teams, TV shows and movies, and random outdoors stuff that they do here and there, not often enough to get really proficient at it. And I know that isn't going to work for me.