I’d like us to consider work for a bit. Work plays a number of roles for us individually and in society. First and foremost, work is how society gets necessary things done. Take the food chain for example. From research into agricultural methods, to the planting of our fields, to the transportation of our crops, to the storage of our food, its preparation, and finally to the disposal of our waste, feeding 7 billion people is no small task.
Let’s consider another function of work though–social justification, or as it works today, earning money. Work is how we earn the right to goods and privileges in society. If I work particularly hard or possess a particularly rare and valuable skill or attribute, society, at least in theory, rewards me with more money, which I can then use to provide for my family and perhaps even purchase some goods and services that make me happy.
Now consider who you spend most of your life with. Assuming you’re still one of those traditional go-to-work types, you probably spend most of your life with your coworkers. You work side-by-side. You go to lunches with each other. Maybe you go on business trips together. Perhaps you even go out after work to spend more time with each other. If you’re really lucky, you might even meet the love of your life at one of those post-work gatherings, in which case, you can spend the rest of your life with a one-time coworker.
Let’s not stop there. Work also provides meaning. Humans are designed to work. We take great joy in getting into a state of flow where we’re creating something of value. We haven’t decided as a society to take a collective rest after the last 100 years of technologically-driven productivity gains, not only because capitalism won’t let us, but also because we don’t know what else to do with our days. Humans need to work for their spiritual well-being.
Now let’s peak into the future of the agricultural process that feeds us. Imagine seeds developed by biotechnology arrays automated to test genetically modified seeds for yield, planted, irrigated, and harvested by GPS-driven tractors and irrigation systems. The crops from these are then distributed by AI-controlled trucks to automated warehouses where these products are further distributed to homes and businesses by more AI-controlled vehicles. There, they are prepped, perhaps first only in factories, but eventually in restaurants, and even at home by automated kitchens with all the waste collected by self-driving compost trucks.
That’s still a lot of work, but how many fewer humans are necessary to do it? Half? A third? Ten percent? Sounds great right? That’s a lot of hard work that we don’t have to do anymore.
Certainly, the creators of these technological wonders will reap untold billions, live meaningful lives, and have fantastic social circles. What about the people who we no longer need to do the work though? How do they get money? How do they meet people? Where do they find meaning?
Now I want you to consider another technology–personal entertainment devices. Currently Americans spend over 4 hours a day on these devices we currently call mobile phones. Most of us have felt the pull to just make a quick check to see what’s going on in our personally tailored world of infotainment. Now consider that the clever people creating our mobile apps have only been at this for about 15 years. Consider that their business models are predicated on finding ways to get us to spend more time with our devices. Consider them following this business model for 100s of years.
And what about the device itself. Do we really believe our current glass-tapping interface is the most immersive way we can interact with the digital world? We already wirelessly transmit audio information from them directly into our ears. What about when they can interface with our eyes as seamlessly too? What about when we no longer have to tap, but they register our physical movements as easily as the “real world”? How addictive could these devices become?
Now combine these two futures–one where we need to work less because the work is done by our creations with one where our virtual worlds are increasing in meaning as rapidly as our minds can imagine them. What do we become? What kind of society does this create? This is just one small slice of life too. What happens to society when these changes coincide with all the other ways we’re evolving what it means to be a human?
These are the kinds of discussions that we as humans ought to be having in the public realm about our future, but we don’t. Rather we prefer to pretend we live in a world that will always be exactly as it has always been. This should come as no surprise, as society is but a reflection of who we are, and we each work mightily to hold on to our ever-me, which has always been and will always be. This is a problem for society though, for when we each individually avert our eyes from death, we collectively blind ourselves to the future.
Through Thanatism, however, we can develop the habits and practices that allow the future to fully inhabit our present. By accepting the part of our futures we want to think about least, we develop the habit of seeing the future for what it is. In so doing, collectively, we can better prepare ourselves to navigate humanity though this point in history where radically new realities crash upon us, not over millions of years, but multiple times in a single lifetime.