[someguy321]

I kind of figure that a lot of people are trapped in a "local optimum." Their life is fairly comfortable, but not extremely satisfying, and any direction they push doesn't yield results in an easily accessible way.

I kind of figure that this is a result of the standard of living in developed countries having a high baseline level of easy comfort, and the fact that life is getting more and more complicated all the time. It's hard to justify striving really really hard toward a complex goal (that didn't even exist in its current incarnation 20 years ago) when the immediate rewards aren't satiating or apparent.