Purpose in a Post-Scarcity World
The Magicians, Ecclesiastes and a refutation of Industrial Society and Its Future
“In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one’s physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert the very modest effort needed to hold a job.” — Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future
A couple months ago, I was persuaded to read Industrial Society and Its Future, more commonly known as the Unibomber Manifesto. What I found scared me, though not because it was crazy or sadistic, like many other documents of its type. No, the Unibomber Manifesto scared me because it made sense, and if it made sense to mail people bombs in an attempt to dismantle industrial society (something that would kill millions, if not billions of people), then I no longer knew what was really right or wrong anymore.
The basic thesis of the Unibomber is an evolutionary one. “Purpose” is a higher cognitive function that our ancestors evolved in order to help them survive. If you feel your “purpose” is to help you and your tribe survive, you will be more strongly driven to take actions that make it so: like waking up early to hunt or staying up late to keep watch. For the humans of the distant past, there was no such thing as existentialism, nihilism or a…
