It gets at a profound question which is related to the problem of evil: is it better to make a bad world good (whatever those terms might mean for you) than for

It gets at a profound question which is related to the problem of evil: is it better to make a bad world good (whatever those terms might mean for you) than for the world just to have been good the whole time? Is it better to have suffering and scarcity because that affords meaning to life in overcoming those challenges? There's a paradoxical implication, which is that if overcoming adversity is what gives life meaning, then what seems to be the goal state, which is to overcome those problems, robs life of meaning, which would seem to be a big problem. The hope is maybe that there are levels of achievement or expansions to consciousness which would present meaningful challenges even when the more mundane ones are taken care of. As far as the Culture's own answer goes, what aspects of agency or meaningful activity that you currently pursue would you be unable to pursue in the Culture? And as far as possible futures go, if we assume that at some point there will be machines that far surpass human intelligence, we can't hope for much better than that they be benign.