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What society has thought to be its greatest social, political, and individual achievements have often resulted in the greatest discontent. I strongly agree that great achievements often lead to great discontent. In fact, I would assert more specifically that great individual achievements can cause discontent for the individual achiever or for the society impacted by the achievement, or both. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that whether a great achievement causes great discontent can depend on ones personal perspective, as well as the perspective of time. With respect to individual achievements, great achievers are by nature ambitious people and therefore tend to be dissatisfied and discontent with their accomplishments-no matter how great. Great athletes are compelled to try to better their record-breaking performances; great artists and musicians typically claim that their greatest work will be their next one--a sign of personal discontent. And many child protgs, especially those who achieve some measure of fame early in life, later suffer psychological discontent for having peaked so early. Perhaps the paradigmatic modern example of a great achievers discontent was Einstein, whose theoretical breakthroughs in physics only raised new theoretical conundrums which Einstein himself recognized and spent the last twenty years of his life struggling unsuccessfully to solve. Individual achievements can often result in discontent on a societal level. The great achievement of the individual scientists responsible for the success of the Manhattan Project resulted in worldwide anxiety over the threat of nuclear annihilation--a form of discontent with which the worlds denizens will forever be forced to cope. Even individual achievements that at first glance would appear to have benefited society turn out to be causes of great discontent. Consider the invention of the automobile, along with the innovations in manufacturing processes and materials that made mass production possible. As a result we have become a society enslaved to our cars, relying on them as crutches not only for transportation but also for affording us a false sense of socioeconomic status. Moreover, the development of assembly-line manufacturing has served to alienate workers from their work, which many psychologists agree causes a great deal of personal discontent. | 
