Mattering

Why bother.

Why bother to cook when you can simply beckon and food is delivered. Why bother learning how to drive in the coming era of the robotaxi. When TikTok parades a pageant of ordinary-looking women with the same crazy eyes bemoaning the lack of desirable men i.e. meaning the 5% at least six feet tall and a seven-figure income, someone deep in the heap of the other 95% might reasonably wonder why a man would even bother to enter the dating pool when a certain primal itch may soon be scratched on demand by a plastic, fantastic model. Why, indeed, bother to pump out these damn weekly intros when they surely will be composed in short order by AI.

In a perfectly efficient society that renders man redundant, might it be that humans would suffer from ennui and loss of purpose (click: The Problem With Utopia)? Struggle gives life meaning – or does it? What happens regarding man’s hierarchy of needs where a post-scarcity utopia bumps up against a dystopia marked by a frictionless world without real challenge?

Overcoming the big challenges is what for many defines a life well lived. Then, as to those everyday challenges experienced in most ordinary lives, that friction itself is a kind of meaning. At the very least, it serves as a good distraction from dwelling on those bigger questions about what even matters. Take away that friction rendered by that perfectly efficient society and what are we left with? The self in a sensory deprivation tank. What then?

Enter the notion of so-called positional goods i.e. those conjured means by which man measures his status relative to others. Perhaps the last scarcity in this frictionless world is the assertion and preservation of the ego, the need to confirm one’s standing relative to others.

We’ve met the breed before, the snob: looking up, he apes and fawns and aspires to a status that is not native to him; looking down, he snubs and sneers at those who don’t share his pretensions. A test case might be the shenanigans (allegedly) playing out among some of the rich and famous who, indeed, lead totally frictionless lives and what animates them (click: Bad Lunch). Does this provide a glimpse of what matters in a post-scarcity world?

Attention becomes that increasingly scarce resource as one moves up the food chain. Let us discuss our own sense of mattering on the cusp of a post-scarcity environment. Perhaps there is a decoupling as traditional anchors like “career” and “providing” no longer structure our identity. The whole notion of community itself might have to be recentered as material self-sufficiency no longer forces people together.

In short, while material scarcity itself generates a certain pleasure, anxiety, and purpose, there will always be those other forms of scarcity known as respect, admiration, and desire.

Please note the following RSVP Policy for Member Monday: RSVP sign-up opens up at 11:00am on Fridays via the City Club weekly Newsletter. Seats are first-come, first-served: the first 14 secure a spot at the table, the last 3 on the couch. Cancellations must be made 24 hours in advance or the standard Social Lunch rate applies.