I watched a video of tourists feeding wild Amur tigers through thick glass panels. The tigers barely moved. They lounged, fat and disinterested, as meat was pushed through holes in the vehicle.
This was the caption:
"For the Amur tigers in Harbin, eating meat is no longer a life, but a job. Due to the large number of tourists every day, they are fed a lot of meat daily and simply not interested in it anymore. You can see just how fat they have become."
These are apex predators. Among the largest and most powerful cats on Earth. They should embody raw instinct and lethal grace. Instead, they’re effectively dancing monkeys, transformed into entertainment for tourists.
Their life’s work has simplified into performance, collecting meat they didn’t stalk, and eating without appetite.
The hunt was once what they lived for, and the food was merely fuel. But now the reward is so easy, so automatic, that they barely have to move.
Provision without purpose creates dysfunction. Abundance without agency creates atrophy.
In the 1960s, scientist John Calhoun built “Universe 25” - a rat paradise. He gave rats everything: unlimited food, water, space, no predators, and a perfect climate. The population of rats exploded, then collapsed catastrophically.
The rats, high on life, became violent, withdrawn, or completely apathetic.
Mothers abandoned their young. Social structures disintegrated. Males stopped defending territory. Females stopped nesting. The rats had everything they needed and nothing they wanted.
Calhoun called it “behavioural sink.” Abundance without struggle created complete dysfunction.
You’ll see this pattern throughout history.
Cornelius Vanderbilt built one of America’s great fortunes through shipping and railroads. His descendants squandered everything within a few generations.
By the time Anderson Cooper – the iconically platinum-haired war correspondent, CNN anchor, and Vanderbilt descendant – came along, the fortune was squandered.
He’s the first in generations of Vanderbuilts who had to actually build something himself. And he had to take himself into dire warzones to forge a sense of purpose.
The abundance itself destroyed the capacity to maintain it.
There’s an oft-proven adage that first-generation immigrants/entrepreneurs build, the second generation maintains, and the third generation squanders.
There’s a strange productivity in scarcity. The Great Depression generation built America’s golden age. Post-war scarcity in Japan and Germany created economic miracles. Writers and artists often produce their best work when broke and their worst when comfortable.
J. K. Rowling was sleeping on trains. Dostoevsky was on the run from gambling debts. Van Gogh was perpetually in debt and relied on his brother Theo for food and art supplies.
The stereotype of ‘the starving artist’ has stood the test of time.
The Ancient Romans understood this dynamic and weaponised it. Panem et circenses was their modus operandi: bread and circuses.
Emperors intentionally provided free grain and gladiatorial entertainment to keep the masses politically docile. Provide people with basic needs and sufficient distraction, and they won’t revolt or demand meaningful participation in governance. It was a regime of control through abundance.
And we’re running the same experiment on ourselves.
We have more material abundance than any civilisation in history. Food delivered to our doors. Entertainment infinite. Climate-controlled environments. Yet depression, anxiety, and purposelessness have become epidemics.
Finland consistently ranks as the world’s happiest country while being one of the global capitals for depression and suicide.
Material needs can be met. Safety nets can be strong. Yet people writhe in agony under the weight of existential crisis.
When there are less external threats, we often create internal ones.
Peaceful and prosperous societies invent new categories of harm to worry about. They create artificial struggles and fragment into warring ideological tribes over increasingly abstract distinctions.
Nietzsche said that without genuine struggle, we either invent artificial ones or decay:
“Man would rather will nothingness than not will at all.”
Better to create meaningless struggles than exist in purposeless comfort.
Seventy percent of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years. Not just due to poor money management, but as a result of psychological collapse.
They have it all and quickly have nothing.
Sudden abundance without the earned capacity to handle it creates catastrophic dysfunction.
Studies of long-term prisoners show that those given freedom after completing their sentences often struggle more than those who had to work towards parole.
Those who earned freedom built agency. Those just given freedom often lack psychological capacity and re-offend.
The Amur tigers weren’t made docile by cages. They were made docile by abundance. The meat they’re given is the same meat they’d hunt. But getting it without hunting kills something essential. What made the tigers magnificent wasn’t the reward – it was the hunt.
The meat is just fuel. The hunt is life.
When you get fuel without life, you’ll be alive but not living.
When you chase objectives but not meaning, you’ll find the trophies on your plinths to be hollow and brittle.
It’s easier than ever to become a fat tiger:
Fed but not hunting. Provided for but not pursuing. Comfortable but not alive. Not struggling for survival, but struggling instead for meaning.
Stay in the hunt. The vigour of life depends on it.
