When Utopia Arrives Before Readiness

At 57, I live with questions about relevance.

A few days ago, I was walking and listening to a podcast—Stephen Bartlett in conversation with Konstantin Kisin. At one point, Kisin mentioned how Tesla won’t be remembered for making cars, but for making robots. Then came the line that stopped me mid-stride: Elon Musk predicting that surgeons could be replaced within three years.

Three years.

I’ve heard countless predictions about AI and automation. Most wash over me like background noise. But this one landed differently. Maybe because surgery feels so fundamentally human—hands, judgment, years of training, life and death. Or maybe because at 57, I’m old enough to remember when computers couldn’t beat humans at chess, and young enough that I’ll likely live to see machines do everything I once thought made us irreplaceable.

The technological utopia everyone talks about isn’t some distant future. It’s going to happen while I’m still alive. And I realized: I have no idea what I’m for in that world.

The Collapse of the Old Equation

This disorientation isn’t just personal—it’s civilizational. And it stems from an equation that’s breaking in real time.

For most of history, survival was the problem. Food, shelter, safety. Progress meant solving scarcity. Meaning followed struggle. Our institutions, cultures, and moral codes evolved around one basic fact: life was hard, and work mattered because it kept you alive.

Sebastian Junger said something that names what we’re losing:

“Humans don’t mind hardship; in fact, they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”

This is the knife’s edge we’re walking.

Technology—especially AI and robotics—is rapidly removing the necessity of human labour. Not all at once, not evenly, but decisively. Driving, logistics, administration, analysis, even medicine and creativity are being automated. Value creation is drifting away from human effort and toward machines owned by very few.

Materially, this points toward abundance. Cheaper goods, better medicine, less drudgery. In theory, more freedom. A kind of modern utopia.

But psychologically, culturally, politically—we are nowhere near ready for it.

Our societies still tie dignity to productivity. Identity to occupation. Worth to contribution. When work disappears, meaning doesn’t automatically replace it. It collapses. And into that vacuum rush resentment, extremism, nostalgia, and ideology.

Europe: A Society Structurally Unprepared

Europe crystallises this paradox, and growing up in England makes it feel as if Europe is me.

Comfortable, ageing, highly regulated, morally confident—but economically fragile and strategically weak. It behaves as if the old order still exists: rules, norms, safety nets, endless peace.

Meanwhile, the world outside is reverting to power, leverage, deterrence, and speed.

Kisin puts it bluntly: “Europe as a continent mistook peace for permanence and comfort for strength.”

What does structural unpreparedness look like in practice? Europe built high-welfare states while hollowing out industrial capacity and strategic capability. It celebrated closing coal plants while outsourcing emissions to China, then shipping the goods back. It designed elaborate systems to protect workers in stable employment, just as the gig economy made stable employment obsolete. It assumed America would always provide security, so it could spend on comfort instead of defence.

The result: a society that optimised for the world that was, not the world that’s coming. Comfort without strength. Intentions without outcomes. Moral clarity without material capability.

And now, for ordinary Europeans, the future looks like stagnation. They feel poorer year by year. The safety net strains. The next generation cannot afford what the previous one took for granted. Political instability bleeds across borders. The society promised abundance, but delivered managed decline.

This is what happens when utopia’s infrastructure arrives, but the psychological and structural readiness doesn’t. You get the costs without the benefits. The disruption without the flourishing.

Two Kinds of Danger

Utopia arriving before readiness creates two dangers.

The first is moral confusion. We mistake intentions for outcomes. We prioritise what feels good over what works. We celebrate the closing of a factory because it reduces local emissions, while ignoring that we’ve simply moved production to a country with worse standards, and then congratulate ourselves for our virtue. We design welfare systems with compassion, then watch them buckle under conditions they weren’t built for, and respond by insisting the problem is insufficient compassion rather than structural mismatch.

This isn’t about right or left. It’s about the gap between the world we’re designing policy for and the world that actually exists.

The second danger is psychological decay. When people are told they are unnecessary—by markets, by machines, by elites—they don’t become enlightened. They become angry. Or numb. Or tribal.

A society that can’t answer “What are you for?” cannot survive abundance. Meaning doesn’t emerge from material comfort. It emerges from necessity, contribution, struggle, and purpose.

Strip those away without replacement, and people don’t transcend—they fracture.

This is why politics has become so polarised across the US, UK, and Europe. It’s not primarily about policy disagreements. It’s about people feeling the ground shift beneath them and reaching for anything solid—tribe, ideology, nostalgia, rage.

When the future no longer offers a clear path—study, work, progress, meaning—people don’t ask for inspiration. They ask for protection.

The Work That Actually Matters

My question about relevance at 57 is everyone’s question now, just compressed. If machines can do what I do, what am I for? If my skills become obsolete, what’s left? If contribution is no longer required for survival, where does dignity come from?

These aren’t abstract philosophical puzzles. They’re urgent, practical, civilizational questions.

And here’s what I’ve come to believe: the work ahead is not technological. The machines will advance regardless.

The work is human.

Rebuilding meaning. Redefining contribution. Designing systems where people are not only supported, but needed in ways that go beyond economic output. Finding new answers to the oldest question: what are humans for?

Because if we can’t answer that—if we arrive at material abundance without purpose, comfort without necessity, leisure without meaning—we won’t get utopia. We’ll get collapse with better healthcare.

Living the Question

I don’t have the answer. I’m not sure anyone does yet.

But I know the question won’t go away by ignoring it. And I know that meaning, purpose, feeling necessary—these aren’t luxuries that emerge automatically from abundance. They have to be built. Chosen. Created.

Living consciously means making ourselves feel necessary, like we’re an important part of something larger than our individual survival. Not because we have to be, but because we choose to be.

The surgeon in three years might be a robot.

But the question of what makes a life worth living will still be ours to answer.

Utopia isn’t dangerous because it’s impossible. It’s dangerous because if it arrives too early—before we’ve learned what comes next—it strips away the structures that taught us how to live.

The technological future is coming whether we’re ready or not.

The question is: what will we be for when we no longer have to be anything at all?