I both think this is a really astute and important observation and also think it's an observation that's more true locally than of people broadly. Modern neoliberal business culture generally and the consolidated current incarnation of the tech industry in particular have strong "tunnel vision" and belief in chasing optimality compared to many other cultures, both extant and past
In neoclassical economics, there are no local maxima, because it would make the math intractable and expose how much of a load of bullshit most of it is.