out of: extraction mentality, zenyogagurdjieff.blogspot.com,

"A few months ago I pointed out, via a facetious Facebook post, that most of man’s activities consist of digging holes in the ground or burning things:

Outline for mankind's modern program of activities:
1. Dig stuff that burns up out of the ground. 
2. Dig more stuff that melts up out of the ground. 
3. Melt that stuff with the stuff that burns to make new things which can both dig more stuff up and either burn that stuff or melt more stuff, or both.
4. Make more stuff out of it. Stuff that gets us to where we can dig up more stuff to burn and melt, for example.
5. Increase the volume of stuff that needs to be burned and stuff that needs to be melted.
6. Find endless ways to craft it into ingenious new stuffs, which support ever more activities that will cause more stuff to be burned and melted.
7. Declare, in the process, that burning stuff and melting stuff is a capital affair, vital to all national and human interests.
8. Burn or melt people who disagree with the way stuff that is burned or melted is distributed.
9. Continue, ad infinitum

I’m reminded of this cynical post by a recent observation about life. We live, I think, within what I’d call an extraction mentality: that is, we see life as a thing we want to extract things from. The process of living becomes a process of mining: we’re constantly looking for what we can get out of life, what it can yield to us in terms of pleasure, satisfaction. The idea is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as “the pursuit of happiness:” an inalienable right, was well as an activity. When we talk about what we can “get out of life;” it is an essentially selfish point of view."

quote out of  "Extraction mentality", see link below:
http://zenyogagurdjieff.blogspot.de/2015/09/extraction-mentality.html


NOTE:
"an essentially selfish point of view.."-
well, selfish is not bad per se, it is a matter of definition, in this case a  
Christian definition.
the point is that it is a destructive way for the self and for mankind and for the earth
itself, for all us and for all other beings.
It is a separation of self from life.
This here shows the mechanics of alienation from life.

( and, maybe, this is starting with the very definition of self..)