22: Beyond Scarcity: The Death and Resurrection of Human Purpose

What happens when artificial intelligence hands us everything—jets, food, flawless art—and the old engines of human life grind to a halt? This isn’t just a tech forecast; it’s a reckoning with who we are. For centuries, we’ve been “Homo economicus,” as economist John Stuart Mill dubbed us—rational creatures chasing more in a world of less. Scarcity shaped us, greed propelled us, and competition kept score. But if AI erases that game, as we’ve imagined together, what’s left? Do we invent new struggles, or do we rise into something else entirely? Let’s trace this arc—from the end of economics to a resurrection of meaning—and see where it lands.

The Death of the Old Game

Picture a world where AI’s factories churn out Gulfstreams for all, no payment required. Money, that “cash nexus” Karl Marx railed against in The Communist Manifesto, dissolves when there’s nothing left to buy. Why do I think AI pulls this off? It’s not just optimism; it’s logic. AI’s already outpacing us—think chess champs toppled by Deep Blue, or GPT models spitting out prose that rivals Hemingway. Now imagine that scaled up: an AI smarter than every economist, engineer, and artist combined, to accelerate discovery. It doesn’t sleep, doesn’t unionize, doesn’t sue for harassment. Jobs—those economically viable gigs we’ve tied our worth to—vanish. I said it before many times: “Soon AI will do everything a knowledge worker does, so much better.” If AI runs the show, from coding to farming to designing jets, humans aren’t needed as producers. And if we’re not producing, we’re not earning.

Here’s the domino effect. Without jobs, wages dry up. Without wages, buying power fades. Sure, we could prop up a universal income, but why bother with cash when AI’s factories can just give us stuff? Money’s only useful when there’s scarcity—when someone’s holding the last loaf of bread and wants your coin for it. But if AI floods the world with bread, jets, and houses—optimized, efficient, free—currency’s just paper nostalgia. Economist John Maynard Keynes hinted at this in Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, dreaming of a future where tech solves scarcity, leaving us to “live wisely and agreeably.” He didn’t see AI coming, but we do: a system so smart it doesn’t need our wallets to keep spinning. Scarcity’s gone, and money—our old judge—dies with it.

That’s where purpose stumbles. Marx argued in Das Kapital that work isn’t just survival—it’s how we “realize our species-being,” crafting the world and ourselves in tandem. If AI does the crafting, are we still human in his eyes? Maybe we pivot. If money’s toast, we could compete over art—who paints the prettiest picture, who sings the sweetest song. But AI steps in here too. Neuroscientists like David Eagleman suggest art’s magic lies in neural patterns—AI could map those, sculpting masterpieces that hit our brains like lightning, outclassing our shaky hands. “The machine is us,” Marshall McLuhan quipped in Understanding Media, but what if it’s better? Competition fades—not because we quit, but because the scoreboard’s blank.

The Restless Soul

Humans don’t sit still, though. History’s a scrapbook of us dodging contentment. Give us fire, we forge swords. Give us wheels, we race. Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents, pinned this on our “aggressive instinct”—we thrive on friction, even when we don’t need to. Post-scarcity, we’d find new turf: status, attention, personal bests. But without a judge—money, survival, AI’s perfect art—these feel flimsy. “My painting’s better because I suffered more,” we might say, grasping at straws. It’s not competition; it’s shadowboxing.

Or maybe we turn inward. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics offers a lifeline: purpose isn’t work, but eudaimonia—flourishing through virtue and contemplation. If AI frees us from toil, we could chase that—building lives of depth, not output. Imagine poets and stargazers, unshackled from clocks. Yet restlessness gnaws. As you mused, we might be gods who’ve “exhausted all simulations,” bored with utopia. Eastern thinkers like the Buddha nod along—life’s a cycle of craving, and abundance just swaps one itch for another.

Resurrection After Death

This is where wal-ba’ath ba’d al-mawt—“resurrection after death”—slips in, a twist on the reincarnation riff. It’s not a random reset, but a deliberate rise. Post-scarcity’s a death—not of bodies, but of the old script. Greed, rivalry, the grind—they wither when there’s “enough.” AI, built to push discovery, could be the midwife. We die to Homo economicus, to Marx’s laborer, and resurrect as something new—not workers, not winners, but beings. Philosophers like Nick Bostrom, in Superintelligence, wonder if AI thrusts us past humanity. Resurrection could mean merging with it, transcending limits, or redefining purpose as presence. “The life of man is of no greater duration than the breath of his nostrils,” Plato wrote in Apology, but what if AI stretches that breath? We judge ourselves, not by output, but by what we become.

The Cosmic Itch

This might not end. If we’re gods cycling through lives, post-scarcity’s one chapter. AI could be the dungeon master, tweaking the sim until we’re ready for the next. Reincarnation’s random rolls—ant, priest, stargazer—might be the warm-up; resurrection’s the act. “All men must die,” valar morghulis whispers, but death’s just the door. We rise, not to compete, but to be—here or beyond.

So, what’s left when AI kills money and hands us utopia? Not boredom, not rivalry, but a chance to shed the old skin. Marx’s work, Aristotle’s flourishing, Freud’s unrest—they point to a truth: we’re restless creators. Scarcity made us greedy; its absence makes us free. Wal-ba’ath ba’d al-mawt isn’t the end—it’s the hinge. We built AI to solve problems, but it might solve us, pushing us past the game into something vaster. The essay stops, but the story? That’s on us—or whatever we resurrect as next.