Assuming in the near future advances in robotics & automation will eventually manufacture all of our basic needs; we will be forced to redefine what gives us value and purpose as we go about the business of managing our daily lives. Regardless of whether we consciously realize it or not most of us tend to place a great deal of personal identification on the jobs we perform for approximately 40 - 60 hours a week - all in the name of paying the rent and putting food on the table. If 99% of jobs whose primary purpose had been to help us put food on the table or pay the rent become outsourced to the scourge of automation and robots much of society will lose a huge chunk of what gave them value and purpose in the management of their daily lives. We will have to find new activities that give us fulfillment and purpose.
No doubt there will be a few lucky souls that won't have a problem finding useful and fulfilling activities to occupy all of their free time with. there will probably be a lot more "professional" surfers and holodeck players... and lots of contests to boot! But there will be also many who will struggle with their new freedoms. They will have a very hard time finding meaningful activities. They will feel lost in a sea of choices that seem to have no value to them. For some of these individuals addressing chronic depression or spiraling into cycles of self-destruction will become a major concern for which society will have to address. A future highly automated society will be in danger of spawning a much higher percentage of disenfranchised daredevils that will not make it past their 20s. Such issues may turn out to be the most important dangers society will have to grapple with for a long time. To counter these destructive problems I think it will be important for society to instill at a very early age a strong sense of self-improvement (whatever "self-improvement" might mean to that individual) combined with the importance of giving something collectively back to the society. It seems to me that evolution designed us biologically to struggle throughout most of our lives. If we didn't struggle we were likely to die of hunger or perhaps end up being eaten by other creatures including by our own species - who were at the time "struggling" more than we were. We MUST find better more constructive challenges in which to pit our biologically inherited sense of survival against. Instilling such characteristics in a more constructive way ought to help open up a golden age for all sorts of pursuits like, art, science, theoretical studies, technology, and the exploration of inner and outer space. * * * * * Finally, in the grand scheme of things I suspect society will eventually splinter into countless separate groups. Many groups will choose to go their separate ways across the galaxy, essentially becoming wandering nomads. Eventually they will lose touch with each other. Perhaps some will continue the never-ending quest for additional automation, their BORG-ification, though hopefully with a kinder gentler outcome. Where these folks will eventually end up, who knows - perhaps ultimately engrained within the quantum framework of the universe itself. Meanwhile, others will want to forget it all. Life is just too damned complicated, with so many choices and unwanted freedoms to grapple with! They will long for the good ol'days, of getting back to nature, of living in caves and dancing around camp fires, and creating legends based on distant memories of their forefathers fruit. They will welcome forgetting it all, of reentering the "dreamland". For them the cycle of evolution begins anew. It would not surprise me in the least if that’s exactly how we came about on Earth many yarns ago. ;-) Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
