The cycle of construction and destruction

A man wakes up early in the morning. He heads off to work to a construction site where he spends eight hours building a house. Then, he returns home, to do it all over again the next day, for five days straight.

After those five days, for two nights in a row, he heads off to a bar, gets wasted, spends lots of money at the expense of his health, and possibly gets in a fight or defaces public property.

In the good times, a company makes a lot of profit, and thus uses some of its newly acquired resources to invest in business development, and hires new HR professionals to start working on the company's ESG framework.

In the bad times, the company scraps those positions and lays those professionals off, since they are not bringing in any profit to the business.

In those same good times, a government will continuously socialize (re-distribute) funds and resources it has come to possess via taxation so that even those not contributing to the society as much as others do can get their share of the pie.

... and once those bad times arrive, the social benefits will get cut off, since there is no more money left to share.

The same continuous loop repeats itself on all levels: individual, organizational, and governmental. Even though the cycle of destruction can be a bit different on the level of an individual, the basic concept is still the same. One of the most distinguishable differences is that some of us cause more destruction than others do – in fact, others may not even construct anything at all. The one thing I think we can all agree on is that the good times of construction should be striven for rather than the bad times of destruction, even if those can never be altogether avoided.

I have always found this continuous loop fascinating, even if a little depressing as well. Would it be possible for us to live in times of continuous construction? I don't think so. To destroy is far too human.