07-02-2021, 06:18 AM
The big reality for much of Humanity will be the End of Scarcity. People will need motivation to do things, and that will need to be taught. "Work or starve" will no longer be a viable motivation.
Ideally people will have some compulsion to produce happiness. Caring about the rest of Humanity should be enough. Typically the most basic needs such as food, fuel, transportation, and clothing have been produced under conditions of sweating for maximal profit. That may be over. Overworked and underpaid agricultural workers, once among the most exploited of workers, may be freed from that. Such work offers nothing but economic reward, but those who have a desire for something pricey might end up milking cows (which will still be necessary), driving a tractor, baking bread, doing oil changes or tune-ups, or making clothes. Many may rediscover artisanship as a creative activity.
I expect status symbols to lose their attractiveness; they will largely become pointless. But note also that most people will be well-off enough to have tailored clothing and custom furniture. Mass-market schlock will be evidence of poverty by the standard of the time.
People who can benefit from post-secondary education will get it inexpensively, whether the classic liberal arts or strictly-technical learning. Liberal arts have the advantage of teaching people how to live, which includes how to use a mind so that one recognizes some basic truths as reality. The decline in the liberal arts as an educational objective shows itself in the amorality of many people who despite their sophistication in "business" specialties have primitive drives guiding their lives. There obviously is more to life than binges in food, drink, sex, pornography, and mass low culture; there are higher purposes in life than material display and comfort and in bureaucratic power. One of the most powerful people in the world in recent times -- and we all know who -- exemplifies the basest drives and desires despite having resources for much better. Just recall my thread on "Dictatorial Style".
Knowledge and culture may have their diminishing returns, but not as swiftly-diminishing returns as a gilded toilet.
Ideally people will have some compulsion to produce happiness. Caring about the rest of Humanity should be enough. Typically the most basic needs such as food, fuel, transportation, and clothing have been produced under conditions of sweating for maximal profit. That may be over. Overworked and underpaid agricultural workers, once among the most exploited of workers, may be freed from that. Such work offers nothing but economic reward, but those who have a desire for something pricey might end up milking cows (which will still be necessary), driving a tractor, baking bread, doing oil changes or tune-ups, or making clothes. Many may rediscover artisanship as a creative activity.
I expect status symbols to lose their attractiveness; they will largely become pointless. But note also that most people will be well-off enough to have tailored clothing and custom furniture. Mass-market schlock will be evidence of poverty by the standard of the time.
People who can benefit from post-secondary education will get it inexpensively, whether the classic liberal arts or strictly-technical learning. Liberal arts have the advantage of teaching people how to live, which includes how to use a mind so that one recognizes some basic truths as reality. The decline in the liberal arts as an educational objective shows itself in the amorality of many people who despite their sophistication in "business" specialties have primitive drives guiding their lives. There obviously is more to life than binges in food, drink, sex, pornography, and mass low culture; there are higher purposes in life than material display and comfort and in bureaucratic power. One of the most powerful people in the world in recent times -- and we all know who -- exemplifies the basest drives and desires despite having resources for much better. Just recall my thread on "Dictatorial Style".
Knowledge and culture may have their diminishing returns, but not as swiftly-diminishing returns as a gilded toilet.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.