Peering deep beyond abundance

As I kept hearing about the upcoming promised "abundance" it made me think to what it really meant. This realization helped me identify boundaries within our existence and gaze deep into nature of life itself. When we talk about abundance we usually mean, an era where everything is pretty much free. I doubt there's a specific threshold for abundance, as we already are in a partial abundance. At least, in terms of information. Any person in the world with an internet connection has access to math, science, art, music related information. As a result, cost of information has been trending towards 0. Sure, there are paywalls, but people somehow find a way to distill and share the same information, sometimes even in a better way. But the most important yet least discussed abundance is the abundance of life itself. We are at a time in the history of human civilization, where we can foresee a horizon where we see ourselves living forever. Some people deem eternal life as a horror straight out of comic tales, whereas for people like me, it serves a meaningful purpose.

Epitome of freedom

Freedom plays an essential role in my life and every decision I make. I believe it does in everyone else's life as well. All the money and power that humans chase is a result of freedom attached with it. No other creatures that represent true freedom like birds freely flying in the sky. 

Why am I talking about freedom at all?

While the post abundance world, does offer humans a lot of freedom, I want to dive much deeper into seemingly an abstract notion of freedom. To do that, we first have to figure out the purpose of life. To makes things concrete, I've taken freedom as an essential axiom to pursue, without which the problem would be very subjective.

What makes life different than non-living things and processes? 

The dichotomy consisting of living and non-living are made from the same substrate of atoms and molecules. Yet they differ in large number of dimensions. But if we strip everything down, we get a simple answer which is an intrinsic goal or in some cases agency. Many would claim reproduction and propagation of genes as the primary goal of evolution and life. I don't believe so. In fact, reproduction and propagation of genes as the backup mechanism of an organism which is not able to achieve immortality. To be concise, eternal life is the primary goal of life. Meanwhile, non-living things like a table or atoms naturally undergo state evolution without the intrinsic goal of immortality. Therefore, we can segregate the two via a boundary which I like to call "static boundary". Within this boundary are all the non-living objects. Beyond the static boundary, we have living organisms which have agency and an intrinsic goal to achieve immortality with backup via offsprings.

Every living being prior to death lie beyond the static boundary, but after death assimilate with the nature thus, they return back to static boundary. To forever remain, beyond static boundary, an organism's life has to be eternal which is what abundance bring forward. 

If we really introspect this idea, then it leads to an unsettling perspective. Like I've stated before, agency is also a crucial differentiator between elements inside and outside the static boundary. Although, agency in simpler organism is tied to survival aka primary goal, however in complex organisms like us agency is much richer and complicated. Our goals are very dynamic and changes according to the environment we interact with. Some may pursue "noble" professions like physics or medicine or mathematics. While some may be working in music, or even minimal labor work like laying bricks. We have a tendency to praise people working in so called "noble" profession, which may potentially advance our human civilization. And even, lead us to world of abundance.

Ahh, the nobility in the pursuit and creation of new knowledge itself is romantic.

The romanticism with trying to understand and become closer with the universe itself. 

Sadly, I like to present a much darker truth. Beauty of nobility is a lie. Everything we do, every goal and activity we pursue, every pursuit of knowledge, every development are all recursive to the self or the entire species itself. Every action we take either benefits ourselves or the human species. Take an example of pursuing mathematics. If I were to ask you to choose out of two problems, one that you would like to work on. And I assure you that the first problem will surely be beneficial or useful to the people. Meanwhile, the other problem does not translate to any real-world problems thus a mathematical fiction, like studying a 655-dimensional exotic mathematical object. Majority of you would gladly choose to work on the first problem, because it's meaningful. A small portion of esoteric people would work on the second problem, because they find it fun. So, the second problem shows an example of beneficial recursion to the self. On the other hand, the first problem is beneficial recursion to the entire species. What I mean is that everything we do despite the nobility claims like understanding the universe, building new technology or a new era etc. are all bounded to the self and the entire species. Let's name this new boundary agentic boundary.

In the coming world of abundance, where death becomes a forgotten concept, we will perpetually lie outside the static boundary. But what about agentic boundary? How do we go beyond it to be truly free?

The irony, freedom we seek, yet bounded by our actions

Since our actions recursive to the self or the species bounds us to the agentic boundary. We need to make sure we do not perform such actions. This may seem quite hard and unintuitive to do, but we have already been doing a level of this since the dawn of life itself. One of such notion is "love". The feeling that transcends time, makes or breaks civilizations, one that makes us sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others. But we do have to be a bit careful, the notion of love towards other human is still self-recursive to the species. But this love can easily extend beyond to other species like your pets: dog, cat etc. Still, this may not be enough as all of the species share the same planet. Therefore, you can go even further and extend your love to inanimate things like a rock. 

But, what's the point of loving a rock? It's stupid. 

Yes, it is stupid. As a matter of fact, I would call it intellectual stupidity. Another form of intellectual stupidity is performing useless actions. Example: moving rock front and back to the original position, saving a distant dying planetary system that has no chance of life from collapse. Ideally in the age of abundance, one would try to seek to write poem, make music, travel around the world or the universe. But all such acts keep us restricted in the agentic boundary. Interestingly, sometimes the beauty lies beyond stupidity. Intellectual stupidity allows us to break beyond agentic boundary, as such acts bring no benefit nor joy to the doer or the species, thus pushing beyond the agentic boundary. To go even further, if we exist eternally just for the sake of existing without performing any action, this will be the highest level of existence that we could achieve that is devoid of any boundaries. This painful act of perpetually existing devoid of any action is the final and the most important act that humanity has to perform to achieve ultimate freedom in the world of abundance. Thus, what lies beyond abundance is perpetual existence while exercising our free will to restrict our other desires.