Good Lord No.

I also want to make life better for my fiancee, and make sure that I'm in a secure position for raising children.

If my job was making me unhappy then I'd move to a different one. And I've quit jobs before when the management were doing things I disapproved of.

And I give money to charity, and (as I said) get involved in occasional political things (like the voting reform referendum earlier this year).

In a reasonably ideal world, most normal jobs are actually useful, too... It's not as if only charity work is worthwhile.

You come across as judgmental to me. If there were more people who's goal was essentially to relax, how bad would things be?

I did not say that relaxing is bad. I just wanted to clarify if that was the ultimate life's goal.

Although I can't help thinking that to be dead would probably be the ultimate relaxation. So if relaxing is your goal, why bother?

Mine is, or I don't really know.

What's the problem?

I just have never been able to understand how some people can look at all the challenges in the world and not feel a need to solve one of them.

But, I admit, this is the majority of most people. Of the minority of people that really feel compelled to "make a dent in the universe" (Steve Jobs) the majority of them are probably stuck in meaningless jobs. This article speaks to this group.

No problem - just wanted to be clear.

And your goal is to pretend you're making a huge difference that will probably not get noticed by anyone, and even if it does, it will be for a very short period of time and after a while everyone will die and forget about it, and then the Earth will die of heat death or something, and everything you made with your "YEAAAH!" enthusiasm and pain will be destroyed anyway.

Have fun with that perspective ;-)