Growth with No End
What is the opposite of growth?
Dictionary.com gives many antonyms for growth, none of which would be considered desirable: decay, stagnation, decrease, decline, lessening, worsening, and, of course, failure.
I think to most people these days, the opposite of growth is worse than any of these things.
It's death.
When something stops growing in our world—say, the stock market, or the economy, or the war budget, we generally don't think it's a good thing. We immediately seek ways to "stimulate" growth, to "boost" the economy. Numbers are supposed to grow in only one direction: up. We are a culture continually giving life to the Myth of More: more money, power, wealth, property, sleep, stuff, resources, time, happiness.
Growth is the end goal of nearly every post and DM on LinkedIn—grow your business, your income, your profile, your reach, your hits.
And, of course, we have a massive (and growing) "personal growth" market. All things of the world eventually seep into the world's nooks and crannies, even those that think themselves separate and apart from the outer, capitalistic, modern, progress-minded, perpetually-growing world. Even those that were originally created to be a salve of the outer world.
Spirituality and self-help were modalities designed to speak of taking care of ourselves and our souls. Resting, healing, reflecting, and connecting were considered essential parts of that work. But these days, we learn instead how to build a "growth mindset." How to muscle through. How to "boost" our self-esteem or "raise our profile."
We talk of people and things that "hinder" our growth. We seek to demolish any obstacle that might get in the way of our continued upward trajectory to...where are we going, exactly? Who can remember, anymore, all jacked up as we are on our growth pills.
You know what else grows constantly, unabated, and perpetually? A tumor. Maybe we ought to listen to the message of one of the leading causes of death in our world: unchecked growth.