Life Without Work?

A video I watched recently asked a simple question: what will happen when the day comes that artificial intelligence and advanced technology makes work obsolete? Imagine a distant future when 3D printing tech has reached its full potential and we have the equivalent of Replicators from Star Trek. That alone would make most jobs irreverent since a good portion of the current workforce on the planet is producing goods. Humans would suddenly have a heck of a lot more free time on their hands and not much to do. Part of me thinks we'd slowly go insane, but if you look back historically, this is what our ancestors did for hundreds of thousands of years.

The average hunter gatherer didn't have iPhones or the internet or books to keep them engaged and stimulated; life was brutal but simple. You hunted, you ate, you procreated, rinse and repeat. Downtime was spent most likely looking at the clouds or the stars, socializing with your tribe, and probably lots of naps. To our modern selves, this sounds utterly dreadful and non-productive. We're so obsessed with hustling to be successful and grinding it out every day to pay the bills that to do almost nothing seems sacrilegious. But maybe it's time we had a radical shift in how we spend our time. Maybe doing less is actually the antidote to the neurotic side effects of modern civilization.