Comment by whoisyc
This.
The same drive for betterment that made our species “kill such beautiful minimalism” was the one that lifted billions out of subsistence farming and 50% infant death rate, and will be the one to escape the destruction of planet earth by sun’s evolution. You cannot have one without the other.
There is societal improvement and then there is the huge amount of ego driven waste and externalized harm. Ideally, theoretically, we could have a lot of the former without a lot of the latter. In practice this ratio seems to be getting worse. Me-first attitudes are way up, profit is misunderstood as merit.