I see this a lot too. Even some of my good hearted friends are mostly concerned with improving their lot in life because they don't feel like they can improve anything else.

A couple months ago I asked an old college friend, "why do you optimize your work only for making money?" He responded, "well, what else am I going to do?" As if there weren't a million problems we all would like to be solved, and infinity of them we aren't even aware of yet.

Retirement in the common sense sounds dreadful.