Failure of Purpose
Here is an excerpt from a Joe Polish email –
“In the 1970s, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health built the perfect mouse habitat.
Unlimited food. Unlimited space. No predators. No scarcity of any kind.
And the colony completely fell apart.
The males stopped competing. The females stopped nurturing. Play disappeared. Society collapsed.
He called it Universe 25. And his warning was simple: abundance without challenge doesn’t produce flourishing.
It produces collapse.
Peter Diamandis has spent decades at the frontier of exponential technology. Steven Kotler is the world’s leading researcher on flow and peak performance. They sat down at a recent Genius Network meeting to talk about their new book, “We Are as Gods,” and what it actually means that we now have godlike capabilities.
And somewhere in the middle of that conversation, the question got uncomfortable.
If AI removes friction… robotics handles labor… and abundance is no longer a question of resources…
What happens to us?
Because the same thing that makes the future extraordinary is the same thing that could hollow it out.
Too much delivered. Not enough earned.
Peter says we’re already watching the first fork happen. Not between rich and poor. Between consumers and creators.”
When we can get almost anything with little effort, bad things will happen to us. I am a firm believer that the effort, challenge, “failures” and struggle are necessary for us to be mentally and physically healthy and strong long term.
What do you think?
Empowerment.