>Hedonic adaptation is a very good thing. Culture or technological stasis is a death sentence for civilization.

Actually, it's the other way around. Thanks to technology, civilization has become unnecessary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS2N4VWIbCI

“Visiting,” says a French writer, “forms the cord which binds society together, and it is so firmly tied, that were the knot severed, society would perish.”

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39293/39293-h/39293-h.htm#CH...