Speaker 1: Aristotle called it telos. Without it, nothing else we discuss
Speaker 1: will make sense. Telos means the final purpose, the natural
Speaker 1: end toward which a thing is directed. Every object, every
Speaker 1: living being, even every idea, carries within it a built
Speaker 1: in destination. For Aristotle, nothing exists without a tellos. Think
Speaker 1: about a knife. Its telos is to cut. If it
Speaker 1: does not cut, it is not really a knife, no
Speaker 1: matter how shiny or expensive it might look. Think about
Speaker 1: the eye. Its telos is to see. When the eye
Speaker 1: fails to see, it is no longer fulfilling its nature.
Speaker 1: Or a seed buried in the soil, it carries the
Speaker 1: silent potential to become a tree. The tellos of the
Speaker 1: seed is growth, transformation, unfolding into what it was always
Speaker 1: meant to be. And what about human beings? What is
Speaker 1: our tellos? Aristotle answered with a word that does not
Speaker 1: translate neatly into English. He called it youdaemonia. Many people
Speaker 1: render it as happiness, but happiness is far too shallow.
Speaker 1: A better translation is human flourishing, the state of living
Speaker 1: in harmony with our deepest capacities of realizing the full
Speaker 1: weight of who we are meant to be. You diemonia
Speaker 1: is not the short thrill of buying a new car
Speaker 1: or winning a promotion. It is not the temporary spark
Speaker 1: of pleasure or approval. It is the long arc of
Speaker 1: a life lived in alignment with our essence. For Aristotle,
Speaker 1: a person who achieves you'd ammonia is not simply satisfied.
Speaker 1: He is complete. Now listen carefully. If you often feel restless,
Speaker 1: if you reach a goal and immediately crave another, this
Speaker 1: may not mean you are broken. It may mean you
Speaker 1: are chasing the wrong tellos. You are running after shadows
Speaker 1: instead of substance. A man who spends his life stacking
Speaker 1: possessions but never asks what he is for will always
Speaker 1: feel the quiet pull of emptiness. But a man who
Speaker 1: aims his effort toward his true tellos will discover that
Speaker 1: dissatisfaction takes on a different shape. It becomes less of
Speaker 1: a torment and more of a compass, a signal pointing
Speaker 1: him toward growth. This is the key. If you are
Speaker 1: never content, the question is not how to silence that feeling.
Speaker 1: The question is whether you have misunderstood what it is
Speaker 1: pointing to. And so, before we go further, hold this
Speaker 1: thought in your mind. Tellos is not a luxury. It
Speaker 1: is not philosophy for the Ivory Tower. It is the
Speaker 1: difference between a life that feels like an endless treadmill
Speaker 1: and a life that feels like a path. One is
Speaker 1: running without direction, the other is walking toward your reason
Speaker 1: for being. Now that we have a framework for telos,
Speaker 1: let us return to the tension. You and I both feel,
Speaker 1: the tension of never being satisfied. Psychologists today have a
Speaker 1: name for it. They call it the hedonic treadmill. The
Speaker 1: idea is simple. When you achieve something you want, your
Speaker 1: happiness spikes, but only for a moment. Soon you adapt.
Speaker 1: The new car becomes ordinary, the promotion becomes normal, the
Speaker 1: relationship that once consumed you settles into routine. You return
Speaker 1: to the same baseline of discontent, and the treadmill begins again.
Speaker 1: No matter how fast you run, you never move forward.
Speaker 1: Take the lottery winner. For a brief period, his life
Speaker 1: feels transformed, but studies show that within a year most
Speaker 1: winners report the same level of happiness as before. Some
Speaker 1: even feel less satisfied because the rush of sudden wealth
Speaker 1: fades and the problems it creates remain. Or Take the
Speaker 1: ambitious student who believes life will finally begin after graduation,
Speaker 1: she crosses the stage received ves the diploma, but within
Speaker 1: months the same restlessness returns. The hedonic treadmill is not
Speaker 1: limited to wealth or career. It appears in relationships, in health,
Speaker 1: in status. We imagine that the next milestone will deliver
Speaker 1: lasting contentment, Yet as soon as we arrive, the horizon
Speaker 1: shifts further away, the goal posts move, and we keep chasing.
Speaker 1: Layered on top of this is another force, one that
Speaker 1: Aristotle did not name but would have recognized instantly, social comparison.
Speaker 1: You do not measure yourself only against your past self.
Speaker 1: You measure against your neighbor, your colleague, the stranger on
Speaker 1: your phone screen. Your car feels fine until you see
Speaker 1: your friend's newer model. Your salary feels adequate until you
Speaker 1: scroll through someone flaunting more. The treadmill accelerates, powered not
Speaker 1: just by your desires, but by the constant reminder that
Speaker 1: others are running faster. This is why no level of
Speaker 1: achievement ever feels like enough, because in a world of comparison,
Speaker 1: there is no finish line. Even the wealthy feel poor
Speaker 1: next to the richer. Even the famous feels small next
Speaker 1: to the more famous. Dissatisfaction is baked into the system,
Speaker 1: reinforced by the very structure of our psychology. And here
Speaker 1: is the crucial point. This cycle is not an accident.
Speaker 1: It is not a rare glitch in the human condition.
Speaker 1: It is the design. Our minds were built to keep
Speaker 1: us reaching, to keep us moving beyond what we have.
Speaker 1: That is why you cannot silence the restlessness by adding
Speaker 1: one more possession, one more achievement. It will not work,
Speaker 1: because the hunger is not meant to end. We are
Speaker 1: left with a paradox. On one hand, this endless dissatisfaction
Speaker 1: feels like a curse. It robs us of peace. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it has propelled our species to serve,
Speaker 1: adapt and create. Without it, we would have stayed in
Speaker 1: the caves, content with fire and stone tools. With it,
Speaker 1: we built cities, art, science, and technology. The problem is
Speaker 1: not that we are never satisfied. The problem is that
Speaker 1: most of us do not understand what this dissatisfaction is
Speaker 1: trying to tell us. When most of us feel restless,
Speaker 1: we assume something is wrong with us. We blame ourselves
Speaker 1: for being ungrateful, or greedy or weak. But Aristotle would
Speaker 1: tell us something very different. He would say that dissatisfaction
Speaker 1: is not proof of your failure. It is proof that
Speaker 1: you are alive and that your life is not yet
Speaker 1: aligned with its telos. Think again about the examples we
Speaker 1: used earlier, the man who keeps buying more possessions but
Speaker 1: never feels whole. From Aristotle's perspective, the problem is not
Speaker 1: the man's endless craving. The problem is that he has
Speaker 1: confused material accumulation with his true purpose. His dissatisfaction is
Speaker 1: not a defect. It is a compass screaming at him
Speaker 1: that he is walking in the wrong direction. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, look at someone who is creating, discovering, or
Speaker 1: serving something larger than himself. A scientist who stays awake
Speaker 1: long into the night, chasing an unanswered question. An artist
Speaker 1: who never feels her work is finished because she is
Speaker 1: always pushing toward a vision just out of reach. Do
Speaker 1: they feel dissatisfaction, Yes, but it is a different kind
Speaker 1: of dissatisfaction. It does not hollow them out. It propels
Speaker 1: them forward. This is Aristotle's distinction. Dissatisfaction aimed at the
Speaker 1: wrong tellos is torment. Dissatisfaction aimed at the right tellos
Speaker 1: is growth. One leaves you empty, the other pulls you
Speaker 1: closer to you'd ammonia, to the flourishing that makes life
Speaker 1: worth living. Aristotle believed that every action should be judged
Speaker 1: by whether it leads us toward our tellos or away
Speaker 1: from it. If you find yourself restless after buying, consuming,
Speaker 1: or comparing, that is not a signal to buy more.
Speaker 1: It is a signal that you have mistaken your purpose.
Speaker 1: But if you find yourself restless because your vision is
Speaker 1: still unfinished, your craft still imperfect, your understanding still incomplete,
Speaker 1: that restlessness is not an enemy. It is a friend,
Speaker 1: guiding you toward a fuller version of yourself. The truth
Speaker 1: is you will never reach a point of complete satisfaction,
Speaker 1: even when you are on the right path. The scientist
Speaker 1: will never discover every answer. The artist will never paint
Speaker 1: the perfect canvas. But in pursuing their tellos, they find
Speaker 1: a deeper form of fulfillment, one that does not collapse
Speaker 1: the moment the novelty wears off. And so Aristotle reframes
Speaker 1: the very thing we fear. What feels like a curse
Speaker 1: becomes a signpost, feel like emptiness becomes direction. Dissatisfaction is
Speaker 1: not a flaw in human nature. It is the voice
Speaker 1: of your nature reminding you that you are meant for
Speaker 1: more than consumption and comparison. This is why the restlessness
Speaker 1: in your chest will never vanish, because it was never
Speaker 1: meant to vanish. It was meant to guide you. Aristotle
Speaker 1: saw dissatisfaction as a compass pointing us toward our tellos.
Speaker 1: Centuries later, another thinker pushed the idea even further. Friedrich
Speaker 1: Nietzsche believed that dissatisfaction is not just a signal, it
Speaker 1: is the very fuel of life itself. He called it
Speaker 1: the will to power. For Nietzsche, human beings are not
Speaker 1: designed simply to survive or even to seek pleasure. At
Speaker 1: the core of our existence is a drive to expand,
Speaker 1: to overcome, to assert ourselves, to create, and to dominate
Speaker 1: our limitations. The will to power is not about political care, control,
Speaker 1: or crushing others. It is about the deep instinct to
Speaker 1: grow beyond whatever boundary we face. Think about history through
Speaker 1: this lens. If human beings were satisfied with survival alone,
Speaker 1: we would still be sitting in caves, content with fire
Speaker 1: and stone tools. But we were not satisfied. We wanted more.
Speaker 1: We wanted to shape the land, to tame the animals,
Speaker 1: to explore the seas. Dissatisfaction drove us to plant crops,
Speaker 1: to build cities, to invent writing. It drove us to
Speaker 1: climb mountains, to cross oceans, to split the atom, to
Speaker 1: reach into space. Every leap forward began with someone who
Speaker 1: refused to accept the limits of what was given. Someone
Speaker 1: who felt the sting of dissatisfaction and turned it into creation.
Speaker 1: The farmer who thought there must be a better way
Speaker 1: to feed his people. The inventor who believed the candle
Speaker 1: was not enough, the thinker who challenged the old gods
Speaker 1: and demanded new truths. This is the will to power
Speaker 1: at work. But Nietzsche also warned us the will to
Speaker 1: power can elevate, but it can also destroy. When directed
Speaker 1: outward in envy and resentment, it becomes toxic. It makes
Speaker 1: us tear others down instead of building ourselves up. It
Speaker 1: traps us in cycles of comparison, bitterness, and shallow victories.
Speaker 1: But when the will to power is directed inward, when
Speaker 1: it is harnessed toward creation and self overcoming, it becomes
Speaker 1: the force that lifts us above mediocrity. Consider the athlete
Speaker 1: who is never content with his performance. He pushes past pain,
Speaker 1: past failure, because the dissatisfaction inside him is not a
Speaker 1: curse but a drive. Or the artist who paints and paints,
Speaker 1: never satisfied, yet producing masterpieces precisely because she refuses to settle.
Speaker 1: Or the philosopher himself Nietzsche, who rejected easy answers and
Speaker 1: forced us to confront truths that were uncomfortable but liberating.
Speaker 1: This is where Nietzsche meets Aristotle. Dissatisfaction is the compass, yes,
Speaker 1: but it is also the engine. It points you in
Speaker 1: the right direction and gives you the energy to move.
Speaker 1: Without it, there is no growth with it. There is
Speaker 1: no guarantee of happiness, but there is the possibility of greatness.
Speaker 1: So when you feel restless, when you feel that gnawing
Speaker 1: sense of not enough, you are standing at a crossroads.
Speaker 1: You can let that energy leak into consumption, comparison, and resentment.
Speaker 1: Or you can harness it as will to power, using
Speaker 1: it to overcome your limitations, to grow into a version
Speaker 1: of yourself you have not yet imagined. Nietzsche would say
Speaker 1: that life is not about eliminating dissatisfaction. It is about
Speaker 1: embracing it, riding it, using it as the very proof
Speaker 1: that you are alive and capable of more. In his view,
Speaker 1: to be human is to be unfinished, to be constantly
Speaker 1: in the process of becoming, and the dissatisfaction you feel
Speaker 1: today is not your enemy. It is the evidence that
Speaker 1: you are not done yet. Nietzsche believe dissatisfaction was a
Speaker 1: proof of life, a raw energy that could drive us
Speaker 1: to overcome ourselves. But in the modern world that same
Speaker 1: energy is not left alone. It is harvested, manipulated, and
Speaker 1: sold back to us. What was once a natural drive
Speaker 1: has become a marketplace. Consider advertising at its core. Advertising
Speaker 1: does not sell products. It sells dissatisfaction. It whispers that
Speaker 1: what you have is not enough, that who you are
Speaker 1: is not enough, and that relief can be purchased for
Speaker 1: the right price. A new phone, a new watch, a
Speaker 1: new car, a new lifestyle. Each one arrives wrapped in
Speaker 1: the promise that this time, finally you will complete. But
Speaker 1: of course you never do. The dissatisfaction returns, and so
Speaker 1: does the cycle of buying. This is not an accident.
Speaker 1: Entire industries thrive on keeping you hungry. They know that
Speaker 1: if you were ever truly satisfied, their business would collapse,
Speaker 1: So they carefully design images and stories to keep the
Speaker 1: hunger alive. They make the will to power small, domesticated channel,
Speaker 1: not into creation or self overcoming, but into consumption. And
Speaker 1: then there is social media. If advertising sells you dissatisfaction,
Speaker 1: social media feeds it to you every minute of the day.
Speaker 1: Each scroll is another reminder that someone else is richer, fitter,
Speaker 1: more successful, more admired. Someone else is traveling the world
Speaker 1: while you sit at your desk. Someone else is celebrating
Speaker 1: victories while you wrestle with silence. The platforms do not
Speaker 1: merely show you life. They show you the cure illusion
Speaker 1: of lives that seem better than yours, engineered to provoke
Speaker 1: envy and restlessness. The result is a machine that multiplies
Speaker 1: dissatisfaction beyond anything Aristotle or Nietzsche could have imagined. Instead
Speaker 1: of pointing us toward our tellos, instead of fueling our
Speaker 1: will to power in healthy ways, our dissatisfaction is redirected
Speaker 1: into endless loops of comparison and consumption. We chase likes
Speaker 1: instead of wisdom, followers instead of virtue, gadgets instead of growth.
Speaker 1: This is why modern dissatisfaction feels so heavy. It is
Speaker 1: no longer only the natural signal of an unfinished life.
Speaker 1: It is a signal amplified, distorted, and monetized. The compass
Speaker 1: still exists, but its needle has been magnetized by forces
Speaker 1: outside of you. It no longer points to your tellos.
Speaker 1: It points to the next purchase, the next scroll, the
Speaker 1: next shallow hit of dopamine. And the most danger part
Speaker 1: is that we accept it as normal. We accept the
Speaker 1: cycle of craving and spending as the rhythm of life
Speaker 1: without asking whether it is life at all. We accept
Speaker 1: the endless comparison as inevitable, without realizing it is manufactured.
Speaker 1: We live inside a system that depends on our restlessness,
Speaker 1: and we rarely stop to question who benefits from keeping
Speaker 1: us unsatisfied. So the dissatisfaction you feel is real, but
Speaker 1: it has been hijacked. It was meant to push you
Speaker 1: toward growth. Instead it is used to keep you consuming, scrolling,
Speaker 1: and chasing shadows. The question now is whether you will
Speaker 1: continue to feed the system, or whether you will reclaim
Speaker 1: your dissatisfaction for yourself. If dissatisfaction has been hijacked by
Speaker 1: the system, then liberation begins when you take it back.
Speaker 1: You cannot silence the restlessness inside you, but you can
Speaker 1: decide where to aim it. The question is not how
Speaker 1: to stop feeling dissatisfied, but how to give your dissatisfaction
Speaker 1: a worthy target. Look closely at the two paths before you.
Speaker 1: One is the path of consumption and comparison. On this path,
Speaker 1: dissatisfaction becomes a trap. You buy more, scroll more, chase more,
Speaker 1: yet each step only deepens the hunger. It is an
Speaker 1: endless treadmill with no finish line, designed to exhaust you.
Speaker 1: The other path is the path of telos. On this path,
Speaker 1: dissatisfaction is not an enemy, but an ally. It urges
Speaker 1: you to create, to learn, to serve, to grow. It
Speaker 1: reminds you that you are unfinished, and that being unfinished
Speaker 1: is not shameful but beautiful. To be unfinished is to
Speaker 1: still have room to become. Think of the artist who
Speaker 1: looks at her painting and feels it is never quite right.
Speaker 1: That dissatisfaction pushes her to refine, to explore, to reach higher.
Speaker 1: Or the scientist who feels restless because there are still
Speaker 1: unanswered questions. That restlessness drives him to discover truths that
Speaker 1: advance all of humanity. Their dissatisfaction does not vanish, but
Speaker 1: it transforms. It becomes fuel instead of poison. Even in
Speaker 1: ordinary life, the same principle holds. The father who feels
Speaker 1: dissatisfied with how little time he gives his children can
Speaker 1: let that pain lead him back to what matters. The
Speaker 1: worker who feels dissatisfied with an empty job can allow
Speaker 1: that restlessness to push him toward a vocation that speaks
Speaker 1: to his essence. In each case, the feeling of not
Speaker 1: enough is the compass pointing to what truly matters. This
Speaker 1: is why Aristotle and Nietzsche, different as they were, can
Speaker 1: stand together here. Aristotle gives us the direction, tellos the
Speaker 1: flourishing we were made for. Nietzsche gives us the energy,
Speaker 1: the will to power, the drive that turns disset satisfaction
Speaker 1: into motion. Together they show us that the problem was
Speaker 1: never dissatisfaction itself. The problem was what we allowed it
Speaker 1: to serve. You will never eliminate the hunger for more,
Speaker 1: and you should not want to. That hunger is the
Speaker 1: reason you are alive, the reason you are capable of
Speaker 1: more than you are today. The liberation comes when you
Speaker 1: stop feeding that hunger with empty things and start feeding
Speaker 1: it with the pursuit of your true purpose. So the
Speaker 1: next time you feel restless, do not rush to numb
Speaker 1: it with another purchase, another scroll, another shallow distraction. Ask instead,
Speaker 1: what is this dissatisfaction pointing me toward