The Prince makes the acquaintance of Imlac, one of the many servants who perform any manner of function for the fortunate princes and princesses attended upon in the “Happy Valley.” Imlac tells his story and ends with coming to the Valley:

“Great Prince,” said Imlac, “I shall speak the truth.  I know not one of all your attendants who does not lament the hour when he entered this retreat.  I am less unhappy than the rest, because I have a mind replete with images, which I can vary and combine at pleasure.  I can amuse my solitude by the renovation of the knowledge which begins to fade from my memory, and by recollection of the accidents of my past life.  Yet all this ends in the sorrowful consideration that my acquirements are now useless, and that none of my pleasures can be again enjoyed.  The rest, whose minds have no impression but of the present moment, are either corroded by malignant passions or sit stupid in the gloom of perpetual vacancy.”

The Prince asks if this can be true. Imlac provides an answer which ends:

“The invitations by which they allure others to a state which they feel to be wretched, proceed from the natural malignity of hopeless misery.  They are weary of themselves and of each other and expect to find relief in new companions.  They envy the liberty which their folly has forfeited and would gladly see all mankind imprisoned like themselves.”

Would one actually grow so very bored that boredom would turn to malice for relief? How would one even answer that question? And if so, is this a universal malady?

AI and a universal basic income promise a similar future. What will most of the world do when fewer need to work?  Yes, that is an open question. There are those who think that advance in AI and related technologies will merely move us to new work, in the way farming equipment moved us off the farm and the automobile substituted mechanics for horse grooms. What these new jobs will be is as yet unknown, but they lie in our glorious future.

However, the possibility that many, maybe most will deprive of labor and earning, and will have no need for work. Will they become criminals out of malice?  How does one inculcate morality, a limitation on how we may treat one another in a place of indolence? Will sloth be sufficient as a deterrent to protect us from dull crowds seeking interest out of violence?

Or perhaps AI’s capacity to generate content will pacify the most with more addictive entertainment, sufficient to lash one’s eyes and brain to a whirl of images and variation?

Still, we do not need to reach that far to see what happens. It is not wretched poverty and starvation which motivates someone looting a shoe shop or engaged in a smash and grab in a jewelry store. The violence against children or the thoughtless rage against some seeming “other” are not the results of desperation; at least not desperation drawn from the bottom rung from Maslow’s Hierarchies (certainly that theory is not immune from questions).

We have the statistics from the current iteration of Western Culture, Generation Z, who by all accounts are the most anxious and depressed—while not facing life threatening want.

There seems some value to us to need to work to sustain life. The basic stress of staying alive satisfies some element of the human heart. And, being deprived of the need to work, to have a goal as clear as this will keep us alive weighs upon us. Better still, to have the need to provide for others, for children matter. Certainly, that burden can overwhelm one when it cannot be fulfilled. But the desperation of doing some extraordinary merely proves the importance of that need.

God lays a curse upon Adam that he must work and then he will die. He will only eat by fighting the weeds and thorns to draw food out of the dirt. And then he and Eve are expelled into the field having been deprived the Garden.

Rasselas has been offered and possess the Garden – or at a least facsimile of the Garden. AI and a universal basic income are an offer of a kind of Garden. But possession of even a sort of Garden devoid of seeming burden, a life basic sort of life where a place to sleep and something to eat will suffice harms us.

An even grander Garden will not work. Johnson seemed to think so.

It is known that no labor leads to depression and malice. A 2021 metastudy reported:

“What is clear from the present study is that unemployment can lead to a higher prevalence of depressive symptoms and major depressive disorder, thereby undermining the mental health of the unemployed.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10803548.2021.1954793

It does not appear that I am depressed because I am going to starve, but because I have no work.

Rasselas is dull and Imlac himself is unhappy, because they lack even want. Enormous amounts of entertainment are available for free or nearly free and that seems unable to protect us from ourselves.

Work was not a result of the Fall. Burdensome, life risking work was the result of the Fall. Much could be said of how too much or too painful work can harm us. But no work harms us too. 

If this is so, and if we can build machines that do all our work and farm our food and make our shirts what will that do to us?