Why are you doing what you are doing?

Why are you doing what you’re doing?

The more I stay with this question, the more I realise how unprepared we are to live in the utopian “UBI world.” I don’t consider it utopian from an economic aspect; it’s more that it represents such a big transition and perspective shift from our current way of doing things that I don’t think it will happen anytime soon.

As human beings, we crave purpose, but at the same time we look for the fastest and simplest way of doing things, since we don’t really like putting our brains to work too much because it’s uncomfortable. But that doesn’t go hand in hand with finding one’s purpose. Purpose doesn’t emerge from simple things; it emerges from hardships and the meaningfully chosen struggle.

What we’ve done very well as a society is create that kind of struggle in an almost artificial way, so that it challenges us enough to trick ourselves into thinking it’s purposeful, and so that we have enough—but not too many—options to think that we’re the ones who chose it. I’m not saying it’s meaningless, but I think this kind of struggle is deeply ingrained in how our society works; meaning comes from outside. Once you change some of the underlying aspects of how society provides meaning, the whole structure around purpose wobbles. In other words, the meaning of most people’s struggles emerges mostly from the community; it’s more extrinsic than intrinsic.

As we move toward this new agentic society, where AI takes more of the mental load society used to carry, we’re beginning to understand how unprepared we were for such a scenario. What’s really happening is that fewer and fewer extrinsic challenges are left for humans to solve by themselves, but that shouldn’t debilitate us; it should reorient us toward inner struggles.

The thing is, most validators we use to filter meaning are extrinsic: social status, money, good looks, a good job… All of these are used to impress others. Our meaning engine ran on extrinsic validation. That’s where we have to strive: becoming more comfortable choosing intrinsic validators over extrinsic ones.

That’s why I’m asking you, as well as myself: “Why are you doing what you’re doing?”