"Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. " Kinda goes downhill from there. "Life will become a game, or rather many games, but not — as it i

"Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. " Kinda goes downhill from there. "Life will become a game, or rather many games, but not — as it is now—a zero/sum game. An optimal sexual encounter is the paradigm of productive play. The participants potentiate each other’s pleasures, nobody keeps score, and everybody wins. The more you give, the more you get. In the ludic life, the best of sex will diffuse into the better part of daily life. Generalized play leads to the libidinization of life. Sex, in turn, can become less urgent and desperate, more playful. If we play our cards right, we can all get more out of life than we put into it; but only if we play for keeps." Does the phrase "Sexual politics" ring a bell? Battle of the sexes? How about negotiations within interpersonal relationships? This sounds a lot like "In the future, I will never have to do things that I do not like doing. Instead life will be just a game of relative pleasures." but maybe I missed something. These Utopian bric-a-brac essays should really take a look at the independently wealthy in our societies. There's certainly enough of them. Guess what? They either become inconsequential dweebs or decide that there is some personal struggle worth living for. In fact, some of the cornerstones of psychiatry and philosophy are the ownership of personal meaning and the journey towards realizing that meaning. As one study said recently, there is a choice between being happy and having meaning in your life. They are not always the same. Meaningful lives involve struggle. I'm really happy to see more folks starting to consider how technology and robotics will change our lives. It'd be good to see most of them level-up, however. If every essay is going to be troubled by entry-level problems we don't have much of a chance of actually getting anywhere in the conversation.