Also, the COVID lockdowns gave us a glimpse at "nothing to do". Finding meaning is pretty hard for many people, especially if you can drown any form of boredom in endless consumption of shows, video games and social media.
Finding meaning is simply less important than having food on the table and a social circle, even if it’s just the watercooler talk with colleagues.
Not saying it’s impossible to find meaning outside of employment, but my observation and experience is that it’s not as easy as "stop working bullshit jobs and you will find meaning easily".
This completely discards the premise. We're talking about a hypothetical world where we don't need work from people, and where it would make very little sense to require meaningless work in exchange for having your needs met.
(We're also talking about the actual present world, where we don't need nearly as much work as we're forcing people to do, so the above should still be partially true, but it really isn't.)
The FIRE community have won the ruined game -- they're what you get when you remove the financial need, but keep the same psychological objective function, keep the same screwed-up sociality. They might be lounging by the pool but they're still stuck in the old mode of being. The ones who transcend the old workday-grind-mode are doing great. But that's non-trivial.
There was a really good article on this that I found recently ... Ah yes, here it is [1]. This is a thought-provoking take on a similar topic.
[1] https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/notes-on-privilege
looks like someone under influence :)
My other conviction is that people find their own meaning with absurd ease when they're children. Then that becomes non-viable. If it ever were to become viable again -- if they didn't have to work at the gas station to cling to existence that keeps them from sleeping under a bridge -- then their ability to find meaning will come back.