Practical Guide III: Training Existential Immunity
When superintelligence becomes omniscient and omnipotent across every dimension of problem-solving and productivity, humanity will suffer the harshest psychological shock in the history of civilization: “If a machine does everything ten thousand times better than I do, what is the point of my being alive?” Unless we break the ideological stamp that “only usefulness counts,” vast numbers of people will sink into weightlessness and depression. At this moment, the existentialism of Sartre and Camus offers the toughest antidote for the mind—on the ruins of a meaningless universe, to swear a sacred vow to oneself, with one’s own hand.
A paper knife has its purpose—cutting paper, its essence—before it is ever made, before its existence.
But humans are not tools! Human existence always comes before any so-called social function. For centuries, assembly lines and capital reduced people to paper knives that “must be useful.” The arrival of superintelligence shatters every function of that knife, yet in doing so it frees us entirely from our ‘tool essence,’ letting us breathe again as pure beings.
Albert Camus wrote of Sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain only to watch it roll back down, and of the gods, who “had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”
Yet as Sisyphus walks back down the slope with heavy steps toward his rock, he is master of his world. For he knows the absurd with perfect clarity and still chooses to embrace the rock. In the post-work era, every human who labors at useless things is a happy and noble Sisyphus.
“In this indifferent, vast universe, no meaning lies ready-made. Meaning is not an ore to be discovered but a brocade you stitch into the wasteland, needle by needle, with your own heartbeat and tears.”