Finding meaning in a post-scarcity world
If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work
If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work. But when they seldom come, they wished-for come.
- Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part 1
I recently watched a show that presents a vision of utopia where everyone can have whatever they want at any time. Anything you ask for will immediately appear in front of you, and you can step through a door and instantly be anywhere, anytime in the world.
Everyone in this utopia is miserable.1
Of course they’re miserable. Their lives are devoid of meaning, because there is no reason for them to do anything.
The complete absence of scarcity in their world leads to an absence of striving. They don’t need to work to earn money, they don’t need to cook or go grocery shopping to be able to eat, they don’t need to eat at all. Time stretches out infinite in front of them, and the only things to do are those they choose to do. At every moment, they must decide what they want. They must want things for no reason other than that they want them.
Every minute of every day, they must invent meaning, for none will be handed to them. It is an exhausting, existentially terrifying, depression-inducing way to live. Of course they are miserable.
For many people I know, life is already like this.
There is no reason to go outside, when anything you need can be delivered, contactless, to your doorstep. Buying things at physical stores is seen as mostly a way to pass the time, or to signal your politics (if you boycott Amazon).2
There is no reason to cook, when you can have a meal delivered from a restaurant, or microwave something you bought frozen. There is not necessarily even a reason to eat, when you can drink Soylent.
The majority of people I know do not need to continue working to have enough money to live — certainly not as much as they currently work, not every day. They don’t need the money and they may even hate their jobs, but they keep working anyway. It is something to do, and we all need that.
When my mom retired, after working as a teacher for forty years, she told me and my sister how difficult and destabilizing it was to have so much choice over how she used her time. She felt adrift, confused, like she must be doing something wrong. My sister (a self-published novelist) and I (unemployed) said, no mom, this is normal. Welcome to the modern human condition.
If you are unemployed, underemployed, or retired, or if you are self-employed, or maybe even if you just work from home, then you are likely familiar with the feeling of waking up, seeing the day stretch out before you, and knowing you are responsible for deciding how to fill every moment of it. It’s not like summer vacation when you were a child. It’s the unending state of your life, and soon to sport becomes as tedious as to work.
So, what do you do with all that time, all those empty days where no one is telling you what to do?
Many people I know are possessed of a quasi-religious zeal that tells them the world is going to end in a matter of years, and they, as part of the select few who know about it, must work themselves to the bone to stop it. This is extremely useful as a source of meaning. They become millionaires and keep working anyway, because it feels so important to them.
What of the rest of us? Some write novels. Some choose to do a second undergraduate degree. Some take on projects: making a documentary, renovating a home, organizing a huge event. Some get into hobbies that give them a feeling of accomplishment: mountain climbing, competitive dancing, creating art. Some become politically active. Most travel fairly often.
And of course, many people have children. I used to think this was a copout, that you were transparently just creating a thing to care about — until I realized that that’s what we’re all doing, all the time.
Reading John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed, I learned about the world’s largest ball of paint. Decades ago, a boy dropped a baseball in a can of paint. Then he added another coat of paint, and another, and the ball began to grow. Now it’s the size of a car, or something.
There was no reason to do this, other than that he wanted to. And that painting the ball, over and over again, was something to do.
Startups, novels, children, they are all just forms of that ball of paint.
Raised so atheist that I was unable to believe in Santa Claus even at the age of two, I have never thought that there was intrinsic meaning in the universe. I reject the forms of philosophy that tell me there is something that exists in the world to be discovered, some correct moral theory, or some concept of Truth or Justice.
I suppose at heart, I am a nihilist, and always have been. But I don’t usually say that, because it makes me sound like I think I’m edgy. Or maybe it just makes me sound depressed.
Anyway I’m a nihilist. Life was an accident, there is no God and no destiny, things just happen and ascribing meaning to them is just a misfire of the human tendency to pattern match, blah blah, you get it.
Believing that there is no intrinsic meaning to be discovered in the universe does not mean I believe that life is meaningless.
There is meaning in life, because humans find meaning in things.
In the show, in the miserable vision of utopia, where you can go anywhere you want and have anything you want at any time, there is only one thing that is real: other people.
In our world, other people are real, and so are animals, nature, the whole physical world external to our selves.
Sitting at home all day and looking for meaning within yourself is a trap. It’s not in there. It’s in the world around you, and your interactions with it. It’s in helping your friends when they need you, in conversations that change your perspective, in walking alone and silent, surrounded by trees. It’s in a solar eclipse and a baby’s smile and raindrops on roses and falling in love and every other cliché.
And if you have nothing in your life that is feeding you meaning every day — no job to work, no child to raise — well, you just have to go out and find it.
I work as a nanny now. I don’t do it for the money — if I wanted money, there are many other jobs I could do, and have done, that would pay better.
I work as a nanny because it gets me out of the house, makes me interact with the physical world. I work as a nanny because it’s a way to see people, and cute babies. And above all, I work as a nanny because it makes me feel needed.
One day last year, at work, I spent half an hour in a tree, climbing the far branches to pick mulberries for the two toddlers looking up at me from below and begging me for more. This was of course an extremely inefficient way to feed them — I could only get a handful of berries at a time, and it’s not like they’re calorically dense — but it felt so much better than strapping them into their plastic highchairs and doling out pre-sliced cheese or microwave lentils from Amazon Fresh.
It felt real, my hands on the bark of the tree, using my body to lean out precariously. Every time I climbed down with a handful of berries, and the kids smiled and ate them out of my hand, it felt like I was providing for them. Like I had a purpose.
You might say that sense of purpose was obviously fabricated.
I say, yes, and also who cares? All senses of purpose are fabricated. We are all creating our own meaning in the universe, all the time.
And if you can’t find joy in climbing a tree to pick fruit to feed children who love you, I don’t know where you can find it.
Interestingly, the show’s creators set it up this way, but then get wrong the reason for the misery.
I was going to say it’s a way to save money but it’s often not even that!