In her novel, ‘The Gap of Time’, Jeanette Winterson writes that Buddha and Jesus knew that when you had so much money that you could buy anything, everything, then worldly goods were worthless.  Modern capitalism has generated a small number of owners of capital who have this much money.  For the rest of us worldly goods are not valueless or worthless.  Omnipresent advertising tends to create a desire in many of us for a lifestyle that is unattainable with our income, which can lead us to be dissatisfied and unhappy.  Some surveys have suggested that engineers are amongst the happiest people [see ‘Choosing a career is like going shopping’ on June 17^th, 2015].  Perhaps this is because we managed to do as Rutger Berger suggested in his 2025 BBC Reith Lecture, which is to measure our success in terms of our contribution to tackling humanity’s toughest problems.  For many engineers, this is a key component of their role.

Sources

Jeanette Winterson, The Gap of Time, Penguin, London 2015

Simon van Teutem, How our brightest minds get trapped in the city, FT 18/19 October 2025.