Money gives you food, shelter, healthcare and relationships; all of which are required for happiness.
I think we need make the distinction between a startup founder missing his daughter's birthday because he is at the office chasing money and the average Joe working double shifts at Walmart.
Most people don't even have the luxury of optimizing their life for money.
Go back far enough in history and money disappears. We had barter and trade and happiness still existed without money.
Go back further and trade becomes les important and violence/cooperation to achieve what one wants becomes greater.
Trying to shove money in a post labor world won't make sense and will just lead to war/genocide if we don't find a way to transition.
Violence is problematic for self evident reasons. Cooperation I already touched on about the community involvement, with all the same problems.
It isn't that we can't imagine a world without money, but that we quickly see the problems with it given the scale of modern day life.
As for post scarcity, it really depends upon what is post scarcity. Money becomes meaningless for things that are not scarce, but some things remain scarce.
How do you efficiently allocate resources? Especially when you have a wide spectrum of preferences.
I think if you spent long enough thinking about that problem you'd just end up inventing money. You'd have to call it something else so it sounded rebelliously anti-capitalist though
But just remember, we are the only observed entities that _create_ meaning, complex, rich, nuanced meaning. We are the meaning generators of the universe.
If the universe has a random forest walk to create meaning, to try new cool stuff, to hold a mirror to and understand itself.
We are it.
We don't know and ex ante can't predict which human(s) might reverse entropy, alter the topology of the universe, prevent an asteroid from wiping us out, escape the bounds of this reality.
None of those things may ever happen, but as far as I know they haven't been strictly ruled out yet.
It's early days yet.
If I were to put myself in Archimedes' shoes (when he basically discovered calculus) motivation comes from "this is nuts but it could work" and meaning comes from "yep that works!"
(That was long ago, but I'm sure it also happens today)
When we imagine something in our brain we are physically testing or creating something even if ephemeral, these thoughts you make have meaning and are real just with low distribution.
They can be very complex thoughts, you can invent worlds and objects and play around with them in your mind for relatively low cost, this is the root of humanities power, the ability to create meaning, to create arbitrary coherence (even if it's just internal coherence)
You can distribute this meaning to others, as a written or spoken word.
You can investigate if your thought has correspondence to something that exists in the exterior world. This can be science and discovery.
But you can also create something that you know doesn't exist and then work to have it realized in the external world.
What's the casual path from Gene Rondenberry to the iPod? Hard to compute.
We create meaning. It's what we do.
The funny thing is this, we keep talking about people's search for meaning, but if we look at the observable facts, to speak poetically, if the universe was sentient (and I don't personally believe it is) it would be looking to us to see what meaning we create and new shit we discover and why it works the way it does.
The causal path from Rodenderry to the ipod .. is.. easy to approximate compared to the causal path from Zen Monks to Darth Vader.. (though they are in roughly opposite directions)
Financially, I'm completely free, very comfortable, want for nothing, but still don't feel any sense of achievement.
I need help
Things that are built with money (& not by say, intrinsic motivation alone) seem to have a high ratio of (traction) to (resources invested). Not sure if marketing alone can explain that?
Obvious exceptions come to mind , eg the Linux kernel, but even that was massively boosted by commercial interests.
(One other class of exceptions could be tentatively named "winning the zeitgeist lottery")
If you would agree that this phenom exists in the short to mid time frame: without the likelihood of traction, how can intrinsic meaning alone provide motivation?
Things that are built with money are often done so for scale. Successful things that are built with money often also have people who have some interest in the thing they are building.
More like survival. I think of Archimedes' letters to the librarian of Alexandria, describing his secret technique of infinitessimals. It seems clear that he knew his work was meaningful but he wasnt going to die without telling anybody about it. He wasn't looking for validation, he didn't need it
Wealth, in the modern era, has been a vehicle to achieve power. It is certainly not the only path, but it is the most culturally universal path to influence the effort of others available today. When we set our ambitions towards lofty outcomes that require power to accomplish, we inevitably run into the capacity constraints involved with being a single person.
Money is a path to acquiring sufficient power to realize goals. Power itself is amoral, and the idealist with good intentions must inevitably conclude that power is a requirement to realize big dreams.
But, effort is also power. For our sanity, wisdom would have us focus on our efforts, with every moment we have, rather than whether or not we achieve the goal. I'll also add that AI is increasing the scope of what our efforts alone can accomplish, for good and bad.
To achieve large goals, pragmatism would require us to derive meaning and purpose from the effort put towards those ends, rather than the attainment of the goal. Think this is best described as an 'open purpose'.
>Money is a path to acquiring sufficient power
Power and money are almost interchangeable, and I'm taking a wild guess that better questions are hidden in that "almost" (as you say, "wisdom+effort", but I'd have to sleep on that for a few nights in order not to casually one-up that with "precience")
However, I'd encourage you to contemplate all the things that money can't "buy."
I categorize power not as the sum total of capability to dominate, or purchase, but influence belief, shape motivation, and inspire action.
Our body can develop power over the physical world. Our mind can develop power over the world of myths and information. Our ability to communicate can develop motivation in others through belief, inspiration, and hope.
Money can out-source, to acquire the power and resources of others.
There are many ways to power - Money is a centrally dominant one, today, but is predicated on a certain order to the world and is not universal.
If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation.
And that’s a bit of a problem with this article. The photographer that wants to quit because of digital photography? I find that odd, it seems to me like the film community has a really great time with the craft of film photography in the digital age. If anything, the massive shrinkage in available professional labs should make the art of developing your own photos even more validating.
Why didn’t this photographer want to quit when Kodak made disposable cameras and CVS would develop your photos in an hour? I submit that it isn’t digital photography that killed their hobby/passion.
It’s okay to not love doing something anymore and take a break or move on to something else. I think this idea that it defines you is a bit of a toxic validation mechanism.
This is written from a different values perspective than mine, but I can understand it. I think you’d have made a stronger point if you’d focused on internal validation, though.
For many, the ideal is internal integrity driving oneself forward. I say ideal, because we’re imperfect creatures - external validation, greed, etc. slip in.
Overall though, a life on the beach sipping coconuts sounds immediately appealing, but long term empty. I’m not going to tell you it’s working 996, either. For me, the journey is finding what makes me whole - through many failed starts.
This seems like a dire situation for most humans and probably isn't the status quo for human operation. Its perfectly fine to sit on the beach, but eventually a light should go on that would say "lets go build some tools", "lets go see if I can catch a fish", "lets build a hut". Which would all be fine and admirable things to spend your time doing.
By the power of sheer discipline I keep moving on. I have my daily routine which encompasses a variety of activities that theoretically should push me forward as a person. But I can't escape the profound sense of disappointment and dissatisfaction. It's terrifying for me to think that this is how I'll spend the rest of my life and then I'll die, but at the same time I'm completely clueless what I could potentially change while there's still time. And the worst part is, compared to most of humanity, I'm very privileged.
Some time ago I was helping my parents with renovation, and I found school documents from my childhood. It said that I had issues getting along with other kids. As an adult I learned what to tell people to get them to like me, but this strategy only gets me to survive in the society, not thrive in it.
It’s really interesting that lack of connection is what you jump to immediately as the cause of your sense of meaninglessness. I wonder what “thriving in society” looks like to you?
And you may have tried this already, but personally I’ve found group hobbies to improve my sense of connectedness. I’m part of a group that meets regularly to sketch on street corners and in coffee shops. I’m not best friends with anyone there, but it’s very fulfilling just to sit with people in the same space for a couple hours, listen to them talk, and share our sketches. There might be drawing, hiking, photography, dance, etc. groups near you…?
You’re certainly not alone in feeling lonely these days though. Modern society is so isolating, connecting feels like such a challenge.
"I know that one day I'm going to die". Yes, and most people ignore it and push this insight away. You know who deals with this topic over and over, that is Buddhism. You might be open to investigate what they have to say. The rest of what you wrote also reminds me of what Buddhism has to say.
"I'm completely clueless what I could potentially change while there's still time. And the worst part is, compared to most of humanity, I'm very privileged."
Again, as I understand it, the buddhists think our live as a human is like a very fine boat, very precious. The Buddhists think we needed many lives to get to this point in the Karma circle. Sounds stupid, but just think how long evolution took to create you, how many of your parents and anchestors had to have how much luck, and voila, here you are! Bummer, not? And you know, just for a short time, and then what for. So the Buddhists think, you have kind of an obligation and responsibility, to make good use of this precious boat. They say, yes, it is urgent, not much time left.
For you it is meaning (maybe). For other it is happiness. For others yet something else. What is wrong to spend a whole life about what would or could be meaningful, or maybe there is nothing, or maybe there does not need to be something, or maybe there is something. Nothing to loose, not. Btw, here is a story I heard from Ken McLeod online in a talk:
It goes like this, a sage is sitting on the side of the street, and Alexander the Great comes along with his army. He sees the sage, and asks him, what do you do the whole day? And the Sage says I am contemplating/meditating/do nothing (I forgot the detail), and Alexander shakes his head and says, what's the point of that. And then the sage asks Alexander, and what do you do the whole day? And Alexander says, I am building an empire! And the sage says, but what for?
So if you haven't found meaning for yourself, at least you are honest about it, and maybe you know already what you are looking for.
The above mentioned Ken McLeod has written a book about Buddhism, that puts it into the context of our Western culture. I once gave a copy to a Chinese, and she said after reading it, the concepts are easy to understand, but hard to remember. For me it is the other way around, very counter intuitive to understand. I gave the book someone else too, and when she saw the book she said, "ah, you are a searcher". Maybe I am, and so far I haven't found anything better or a contradiction in it. So that is my best lead so far, maybe you would find it worthwhile to look into this area too (the book is BTW "Wake Up To Your Life", there is also a web site with lot's of transcribed talks: https://unfetteredmind.org/).
(disclaimer: meditation can be also potentially harmfull, as e.g. "terrifying" thoughts could be even more amplified and leading to a real or deeper crisis.)
Anyway, good luck (to everybody).
Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time.
When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value, and then optimize our entire lives according to that myth.
The idea that AI destroys meaning is a false framing. Many people are already experiencing a meaning crisis, and AI is simply an easy scapegoat.
Purpose comes from discovering our own values through living, not from accepting meanings imposed by others.