Obvious, but Difficult

I called my novel The City of Earthly Desire for a reason. The bulk of the narrative focuses on the attainment of earthly success, often at the expense of higher things. I have always been intrigued by the price people are willing to pay to attain the fruits of materialism and hedonism. This does not imply that I consider earthly success to be wrong or sinful. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, there is nothing wrong or sinful in achieving worldly success while pursuing higher goals, but I believe it wrong and sinful (as well as foolish) to sacrifice higher goals in the pursuit of worldly success.

Unfortunately, earthly success is the only recognized and celebrated form of success in our contemporary world. It is no exaggeration to claim it has become the only meaningful goal worth aspiring toward. Those who achieve spectacular levels of material wealth and fame or those who advertise lives of endless hedonistic pleasure are worshipped as gods. Those who forgo some degrees of earthly success in favor of other goals, namely spiritual goals, are ridiculed and treated with suspicion and scorn.

This does not imply that the material and the spiritual are mutually exclusive in this world. I do not advocate for a purely ascetic life of austere spiritualism; nor do I advocate for a life stripped of all spirituality - one immersed only in material comfort and hedonistic pleasure.
 
Both are extremes; neither is optimal. Yet it is the latter that reigns in our contemporary world – and it goes without saying that many of the problems we create for ourselves originate there.

And most people are oblivious to this. A few seem to be aware of it at some vague level, but are unwilling to apply this knowledge in any meaningful way, especially when it concerns themselves.