Since the **industrial revolution**, people have been defined by their job title and the procedures they follow.
The industrial revolution has created wealth, but pressured us into a procedural way of living. Work 9 to 5, admin, file financials… Wealth had to be created but it had to be done through procedures. People adhered to these procedures, even if it meant that they had to risk their lives in factories and we had to let their children work for two dollars a week.
We became **automaton servants**. The assembly line being the most glaring example of this.
The industrial revolution was effective in letting humanity progress with the resources available at the time, but it created a template of work that many of us today experience as the **daily grind**.
Work as we know it today is a **social construct** that emerged out of necessity to facilitate the contemporary productivity paradigm. The concept of a career, job titles, job descriptions, promotions and division of labor, all emerged out of the attempt of making the world of work more organized to achieve efficiency, a system optimized for profit.
Even though since the industrial revolution work has become a lot safer and generally just more acceptable, today we are still very dependent on our jobs to fulfill our basic needs and we let our lives be determined for a significant part by this necessity. It was no one's deliberate design, it is the result of a transitional era of getting us to the next level. Our definition of self is heavily influenced by our work, but our work in many cases does not reflect who we really are, but rather reflects our attempt to fulfill our basic needs.
Most people still need a job to get food on the table, and that necessity drives them into a job that they don't necessarily like. As a result, their job doesn't align with their identity and personal goals. An 'occupation' in most cases is exactly that, an occupation. An occupation of the mind, held hostage by a system that self-organized and optimized for efficiency for the whole, but cutting opportunities for **self-actualization** of the individual along the way. The human mind is the captive of routine, and routine is the biggest enemy of exploration.
Not only the assembly line job is a good example that speaks for itself, many other jobs are similarly procedural. White collar jobs like in finance, operations and legal can have similar repetitive patterns with the additional pressure of career progression. Climbing the career ladder for some has become their life's purpose.
Humans have a lot more to offer than being a cog in a machine, the human potential is greater than that. We're born to create, explore, invent, not for never ending mindless execution. With most people's occupations being driven by necessity, clearly most people are not even close to fulfilling their full potential. No individual is to blame for this, the day-to-day currently just asks too much attention from us and we're not triggered enough to think about self-fulfillment.
The daily grind distracts us.
Many people end up doing the same boring job for the rest of their lives. 'It's fine', they say, when you ask them how they feel about their job, not aware of all the options and missing perspective of what life can look like, the bright side is covered by their current belief systems shaped by necessities for survival. Driven by necessity as opposed to meaning, work becomes something alien to us, something we don't identify with, we just execute and wait for payday.
You've heard the boomer say work is work, you gotta make a living. But 'making a living' couldn't be more of an unsuitable saying. If making a living means getting food on the table, then that's a very limited view of making life. Dreading to look at your bank account because you can't pay the bills anymore, full of anxiety on a Sunday evening because you know tomorrow the work week starts, having to work with systems that work against you… that's not life, that's the miserable part of life.
I was personally lucky to be liberated from work as a necessity, and I'm dedicated to help liberate more people, because there's an optimistic story to tell here.
It's clear that currently most people are still mainly motivated by external factors in their decision regarding work. Financial necessity being the main driving force for most people to work. Humans have basic needs that have to be fulfilled, and if they're not, all focus will go to fulfilling those basic needs.
A framework helpful to better understand human needs and the dynamics between those needs, is **Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs**, which is a foundational theoretical framework to better understand human needs, often visualized in a pyramid because people tend to only prioritize fulfilling higher level needs when lower level needs are sufficiently met.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
The lower level (basic) needs are about fulfilling **physiological needs** (food, water, shelter, heat, clothes) and **safety needs** (health, financial security, personal security).
The mid level needs are about fulfilling **psychological needs** (family, friendship, intimacy, love, self-esteem, intellectual and creative stimulation).
The higher level needs are about **self-fulfillment needs** (self-actualization needs like partner acquisition, parenting, developing talents, pursuing goals and transcendence needs like spiritual and transpersonal needs).
Important to understand is that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual will strongly desire the higher-level needs. When lower level needs are unmet, people will focus their attention on those lower level needs. For example, when someone's need for food and shelter is not sufficiently met, they will prioritize having enough food and shelter before spending a lot of time on their higher level psychological and self-fulfillment needs. **Metamotivation** is a term used in Maslow's framework to explain the motivation of people who go beyond the scope of basic needs and strive for self-fulfillment. People tend to experience metamotivation when their basic needs are already met.
Currently, most people are stuck in basic needs fulfillment. For some people their job is a means to self-actualization. But for most it's a roof over their heads.
Outside-in forces dominate. Necessities for survival are the starting point. So what happens when you take away the financial necessity to work?
Picture this, a world of **abundance** with so many resources no person on earth has to worry about food on the table, a roof over their heads and access to healthcare. The current **AI revolution** is bringing this to us. AI is taking more and more work out of our hands. The most repetitive and inhuman jobs first.
This trend is continuing and accelerating. It would only make sense that soon, AI will be responsible for the biggest majority of work produced. The **AI workforce** will grow, the human workforce will shrink, and as a result more people than ever will have access to money and (free) resources. It will become normal to not be employed and still have plenty of cash, access to utilities and shelter. People will still be productive, creative, explorative, but not to serve a system, but rather to serve their self-actualization and transcendence needs.
With limitations being taken away by the machine, we can finally start our renaissance to get closer to who we should be.
The machine is powering us to be less of a machine.
This will be our **self-actualization epiphany**.
With our basic needs completely taken care of we'll naturally climb up in the hierarchy of needs.
I strongly believe a **self-fulfillment renaissance** will commence; technology will take care of productivity and will create a world of abundance in which everyone will have their basic needs covered, which frees up time and focus for the higher level needs, and will elevate people to focus on psychological needs and eventually self-fulfillment needs. More people than ever before will approach their full potential.
The opportunity to realize one's full potential finally becomes commonplace instead of being only for the elite who have basic needs covered. Ideas are not stopped in their tracks anymore by unmet lower level needs that require constant immediate attention. Instead, artistic expression, invention, athletical achievements, becoming the best parent, they will all become one's day-to-day focus, as opposed to merely being dreams washed away by the distraction of the required daily grind.
Some people would worry that in a world of abundance we would degrade ourselves to lazy, tube-fed simpletons glued to our screens (like in the movie WALL-E), but I think people are simply too **neophilic** for that. We have a strong drive to stimulate our brains, whether it's through social, creative or intellectual activity. We're neophytes. Without innate novelty seeking behavior the roman empire, the pyramids and technology would never have been built.
We will stir things up when life becomes too boring, we always have.
Our neophilic nature will be maximally triggered.
Our job title and career will not define us, creativity, love and curiosity will. Instead of climbing the career ladder, we'll climb the ladder of needs, all the way up to self-actualization and eventually transcend.
Self-fulfillment needs will be the single biggest human motivator, with unimaginable consequences, people will be much more self-aware, aspiring and connected with themselves and others.
This is our new search for meaning without the continuous pressure of feeding our children. Freeing up our time and attention for creativity, exploration, parenting, love, religion, talent development, personal goals and eventually transcendence.
This focus on self-actualization and our soul will compound on an individual and societal level, which in its turn catapults our opportunities, raises our standards, and swings the flywheel of fortune.
The self-actualization renaissance fueled by the AI revolution allows us to escape the production line, become human again.
We'll redefine ourselves, starting from our identity, our true nature, instead of starting from what the outside world expects from us.
Purpose becomes personal, not procedural. What a man can be, he must be. This is the prophecy.
The amount of love given and received will explode.
Our hugs will be warmer, more genuine and heartfelt than ever before. Our focus will be greater, our understanding deeper, our laughter louder, our empathy amplified.
We will connect with each other in ways unimaginable.
We will discover more about ourselves than ever before.
We will finally know what it means to have a soul.
We will start with a blank canvas again which we can fill with our own colors instead of having it painted gray for us.
The reincarnation.
We will have time to listen to each other for hours without interruption, the need to prove our value for the system moved to the background.
The AI revolution is the biggest opportunity in the history of humanity. Embrace the machine, embrace it so we can become less of a machine ourselves. Let the machine liberate us.