- Unsupervised Learning
- Posts
- The Post-work Epoch
The Post-work Epoch
I am fascinated by how the ways we think about things change over time. Big things. Things like human equality, what people should be doing with their lives, etc.
We used to think, as humans, that the goal was to not get eaten by stuff. Then there was some point when we thought it was to do exactly what you were told. And now it’s something like, do your job well.
The post-work epoch
What happens when work isn’t the goal of most humans’ lives? What will humans do at that point?
Assuming me make it there, the goal will be to improve the world through creation of experiences for others. Art, science, literature, etc.
There will be plenty of people still doing some kind of “work”, maintaining infrastructure, improving the infrastructure, etc., but that might even be rotated among people.
Before vs. after
The point is that it’ll seem rather strange when people look back on what we do now. What we do now will be known as a series of ancient weaknesses. Having to work to support infrastructure will be seen as simple primitive technology.
But working to perpetually grow economies will be looked upon as truly archaic. We pursue money in order to grow, but we’re far too large already. Why exactly are we trying to grow economies when we have a well-understood overpopulation problem.
So we’ll be moving from a time when we try to grow economies and populations that are already too large, and we work to maintain primitive infrastructure, and we work to grow profits for large corporations.
We’ll be moving from a time where 90% of a person’s free energy is spent gasping for air in preparation for the next grind.
The epoch changes that.
The epoch signals people waking up in the morning and thinking about how best to improve the world through their music, art, comedy, dance, pottery, etc.
I can’t wait to look back on what we have now.