Humanity stands at a precipice unlike any other in our history. For millennia, our species was defined by scarcity—the daily struggle for food, shelter, and basic survival. This existential pressure shaped our institutions, our values, and our very consciousness. But now, for a growing portion of humanity, technological progress has begun to dissolve these ancient constraints.
This nascent abundance creates a profound existential challenge. When survival is no longer the primary organizing principle of society, what takes its place? The initial stages of this transition have proven treacherous. Without the gravitational pull of necessity, many have found themselves adrift in a sea of meaningless consumption, chasing fleeting pleasures that fail to nourish the deeper yearnings of the human spirit.
Yet abundance, properly understood, doesn't mark the end of human striving but its transformation. As our basic needs are increasingly met through automated systems and artificial intelligence, we witness a metamorphosis of human endeavor—from the realm of survival to the realm of narrative expression. The central project of an abundant society becomes the creation and enactment of stories worth living.
This shift has been foreshadowed throughout history in the practices of aristocracies and leisure classes who, freed from material want, often devoted themselves to elaborate cultural constructions—from the pageantry of medieval courts to the aesthetic refinements of salon culture. What was once the province of elites now becomes the potential birthright of all.
However, narrative expression isn't merely entertainment or distraction. At its most profound, it is the medium through which we construct meaning itself. Through shared stories, rituals, and practices, we transmute the raw material of experience into the gold of significance. We move from merely surviving to truly flourishing.
A common misconception about post-scarcity societies is that they must, or naturally tend to evolve toward utopia—a static state of perfect harmony and satisfaction. This vision, however seductive, fundamentally misunderstands human psychology. We are creatures who thrive on challenge, growth, and the overcoming of obstacles. A world without friction would quickly become a world without meaning.
This is why all vibrant cultures incorporate elements of what might be called "artificial scarcity"—self-imposed constraints that create the necessary tension for meaningful action. Consider the unnecessary complexity of games, from chess to basketball. Nothing compels us to move wooden pieces across checkered boards according to arcane rules or to throw balls through elevated hoops while observing elaborate restrictions. Yet we eagerly embrace these artificial challenges because they create arenas for mastery, excellence, and meaningful competition.
The same principle applies to cultural forms. The sonnet's strict requirements of meter and rhyme don't limit creative expression but catalyze it. The tea ceremony's precise choreography doesn't diminish the experience of connection but intensifies it. Even spiritual practices like meditation or prayer derive much of their power from their structured nature.
James P. Carse's distinction between "finite" and "infinite" games provides a crucial insight here. Finite games are played to win—they have definite beginnings and endings, winners and losers. Infinite games are played to continue play—they aim not at victory but at perpetuation and evolution. The goal of culturecraft is not to "win" at civilization (a finite game) but to create the conditions for infinite play, to establish frameworks that allow for endless meaningful variation and development.
This perspective liberates us from the false binary of utopia versus dystopia. Instead, we can envision a plurality of cultural systems, each with its own artificial scarcities, each generating distinct forms of meaning and excellence. Some will emphasize aesthetic refinement, others intellectual achievement, still others physical prowess or spiritual depth. The measure of a culture becomes not its proximity to some imagined perfect state but its capacity to generate meaningful play for its participants.
These social games will always revolve around the innate human drives for status and mate selection—the deep evolutionary imperatives that have shaped our social behavior for millions of years. Far from being primitive impulses to transcend, these drives represent fundamental sources of human motivation and meaning. Status hierarchies create frameworks for achievement and recognition; mate selection generates the elaborate rituals of courtship, beauty, and connection that have inspired humanity's greatest art and literature.
The key insight is not to eliminate these dynamics—which would be both impossible and undesirable—but to channel them in diverse and enriching directions. Different cultures can construct different status games, valuing different forms of excellence: intellectual achievement, artistic creation, physical prowess, spiritual depth, communal service, or countless other human capacities. Similarly, the elaborate cultural forms surrounding attraction and partnership can take myriad shapes, each creating its own aesthetic and narrative possibilities.
This is not something to avoid, but rather to cherish and build upon in many directions, recognizing that these ancient drives, when given proper cultural expression, become engines of human creativity and flourishing.
As we move from scarcity to abundance, from necessity to choice, we confront a paradox: unlimited freedom can itself become a form of imprisonment. When everything is possible, nothing feels necessary. When all options are equally available, selection becomes arbitrary. The burden of total choice can lead to paralysis, anxiety, and a pervasive sense of meaninglessness.
This brings us to perhaps the most crucial decision facing post-scarcity societies: what do we set apart as sacred? The etymological root of "sacred" means "to set apart" or "to make separate." The sacred is that which we elevate beyond utility and convenience, that which we place beyond the realm of casual alteration or dismissal. It represents our answer to the question: what matters most?
In traditional societies, the sacred was often determined by religious authorities or ancestral customs. In our emerging world of cultural abundance, this determination increasingly falls to each community and, ultimately, to each individual. This is both our freedom and our burden.
The ancient distinction between sacrum and profanum offers guidance here. The profanum encompasses the vast domain of the changeable, the negotiable, the instrumental—all the systems, technologies, and arrangements that serve our practical needs. The sacrum represents what we choose to preserve, protect, and revere—the core experiences and values that give meaning to the whole enterprise.
A healthy culture maintains a dynamic but clear boundary between these domains. It does not make everything sacred, which would render society rigid and brittle. Nor does it make nothing sacred, which would leave us adrift in a sea of meaningless options. Instead, it carefully distinguishes between what must be preserved and what may be reinvented, between the foundational and the experimental.