...one of the first achievements of the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar agricultural fair to show off forty dollars' worth of pumpkins in - however, the Territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum".
Contentment is never the outcome of fulfillment, of achievement, or of the possession of things; it is not born of action or inaction. It comes with the fullness of what is, not in the alteration of it.
Superior technical achievements - used correctly both strategically and tactically - can beat any quantity numerically many times stronger yet technically inferior.
That has been the great achievement of our age: to so thoroughly flood the planet with megabits that every image and fact has become a digitized disembodied nothingness. With magnificent determination, our species has advanced from Stone Age to Industrial Revolution to Digital Emptiness. We've become weightless, in the bad sense of the word.
Greed for enlightenment and immortality is no different than greed for material wealth. It is self-centered and dualistic, and thus an obstacle to true attainment. Therefore these states are never achieved by those who covet them; rather, they are the reward of the virtuous.
For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.