Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.

They say it just repeats, over and over.

This is not just civilization’s rise and fall, but the engineer’s dilemma. Which is, more accurately, Man’s dilemma. We invent problems in order to solve them, with or without technology, or capitalism. It’s the creative impulse, and in most cases it boils down to idleness, or too much time to think.

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